November 24, 2000
Best Bakers On The Island
Chesty coughs, crumpled duvets and terminal trips to the vet...
Chesty coughs, crumpled duvets and terminal trips to the vet. Yes, for Bitter Springs, it's all about living the dream. Five men who seem to have spent more than a few quiet evenings in with disenchantment, they are unsurprisingly still a bit touchy about their 'noble failures' tag. Certainly, this strange composite of songs - some new, some old, some hooked from their previous murky and obscure incarnation as Last Party - speaks of squalid, chilly dressing rooms, carbon monoxide poisoning from the hired Transit, the worrying creep of time and an admirably stubborn refusal to give it up. Yet anyone who can write songs as vituperative as the unsteady disco shambles of the Vic Godard-aided 'Hollywoods Decision' should consider themselves champions among men.
Belonging to that tenderly blokeish subgenus who see life half through the bottom of a glass and half through grime-tinted spectacles, they manage that trick of hitting little epiphanies on the gum-spotted pavements. The improbably exotic swoon of 'Under The Rainbow' (assisted by Kitchens Of Distinction/Stephen Hero players Patrick Fitzgerald and Julian Swales), the gruff fatalism of 'Ucit' and the depressing-as-formica lament of 'The Outskirts' all make the kitchen sink into a thing of beauty.
No, it's not failure. Just a different kind of success.
Victoria Segal
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