The spotlight’s on Josh Haden, standing misty-eyed, and cradling his bass like a comfort blanket. He’s singing ‘Bad Woman Blues’, the gist of which is that he’s loved, she’s hurt him, and he’s lost. There are real tears in this song. So why is it that Spain don’t break our hearts?
Spain are one of an increasing glut of no-frills, country-tinged US bands that – very vaguely – say it like it is. My woman’s left me. My heart’s been broken. No, I won’t smile, if you don’t mind. Theirs is a music built around a number of laudable attributes – passion, grit and honesty, all presented against a weekend-broadsheet-friendly, acoustic background.
But really, what’s the point? NME could walk out onto the street right now, and collar a passer-by who’d be able to tell us about his failed love-life with more wit, more vigour, more insight into the human condition than any of Spain‘s slick dirges. We want tales embellished, feelings evoked, hell, we want to be entertained – but throughout a punishingly miserable set of songs from their ‘She Haunts My Dreams’ LP, nothing is shot, nothing is fucked, and nothing near a good yarn is ever spun.
Spain are just so relentlessly ordinary. If this is the voice of real America, we need all the fakers, the frauds, the sell-outs and the charlatans that we can get.