OK, I promised to write something "longer" about the new Bob Geldof CD so here I am, midnight just past, sitting cross legged on my bed, tugged in my somewhat telling sunflower patterned sheets (it's bloody freezing here!) ready to give you my full and rather personal insight into an album I grew quite fond of during my last couple of weeks, touring Canada and the US. As I already said in my brief post of last week, it's an album that shouldn't be listened to in a car with the engine roaring over the multitude of little details hidden everywhere in the songs.

Headphones seem like a good idea!I don't have any, so I'll just push the tolerance of my flat mates and neighbours to the test and turn it up a little. Right then, here we go:

ONE FOR ME. It's medium beat and quite easy-listening. There's a very distinctive guitar providing most of the melodic background for the song. In spite of the pleasant melody, this song is already one of those, which already got talked about in some previews due to it's rather blunt lyrics. It's definitely dealing with the past and it's about remembering... you should have known better is the main line of the chorus. Probably the most radio-friendly tune on the album - if Bob was aiming at getting some airplay anyway. Most of the album makes me wonder if...

$ 6,000,000 LOSER (note the correctness of the American way of putting commas rather than dots in-between the zeros!) Quite creepy this one - very monotone, thus intense! The lyrics are a mere 59 words (Yes, I counted them.) repeated various times of course. One things that in my mind stands out in most of the songs on the album is the excellent rhythm section. Bass and drums (whether they be real drums or computer programming) really stand out! Who's drumming on the album? No lesser than Niall Power (Bob live drummer), Joshua Macrae (don't know him), Roger Taylor (of Queen) and one Keith Prior (?). Excellent job among the four of them! The choir of background singers/singing is another great thing in this song!

PALE WHITE GIRLS is the most quite song on the album. "Harrowingly gorgeous" Q-Magazine (yes, I am well prepared for this one!) calls it and although I haven't got a clue what harrowingly means, I am sure, I agree! The lyrics are whispered rather than sung. A distinctive piano in the background, few guitars, a trumpet! Although the latter one must really be a synthesizer, since no one is credited for playing anything quite like a trumpet / trombone / you-name-it. A love song? Or a song to make love to? I'd say so!

THE NEW ROUTINE in my opinion is the weakest song on the album. Even though I've heard it quite a few times now, it still isn't an "earworm" as we Germans ("We Germans" - that's about as patriotic as I will get!) call those songs that refuse to leave you for days on end. Very slow, quiet, eerie. Some of the sounds in the background sound as if they were coming from one of those totally bizarre Relaxation Antennas like Edward Ka-Spel (of former Legendary Pink Dots-Fame) is sometimes using. I have no idea what kind of an instrument that is... It really looks like an antenna which,  when approached by the hand, starts making really weird noises. The closer you reach, the more weird they get. Anyhow... enquire at your local music store if you need to know more. Or listen to this song. In spite of that it's just not very interesting. It's not quite Ovaltine / But welcome to the new routine / Whatja have to do to get a drink here? Right! 

Out of the blue, we're launched right into a very Pink Floyd-ish arrangement of song. A piano playing strong, full chords, some screeching guitar, loads of backing vocals! All produced to sound very grand pop. The last minute of the song's got Bob shouting loads and loads of yeahs - how come I suddenly think of (the) howling wolf?!

 
MIND IN POCKET is probably my second-least favourite song on the album. Which is not saying that I don't like it - I just like most of the other songs better. I'm just not too much into this kind of music. The choir at the beginning of the song makes me laugh: It sounds like a bunch of pirates humming whilst sitting on a barrel of good strong rum and a coffin! But before they really get into it, they're gone again. What a shame! The tune's quite funky. Guitar dominated, that's for sure. Bob's lyric partly are very high-pitched and funky, too. Ah! Here's the pirates again! Cool stuff! Favourite lyric from this song: There's people in the street/Dancing to their car alarms. Some of this song's lyrics are rather parental advisory!

MY BIRTHDAY SUIT is very sad. A beautiful guitar (and not much else) is accompanying some very emotional lyrics sung in a whisper. No need to say more, really.

SCREAM IN VAIN - yes, this is definitely my favourite song of the album! It's suberb. All of a sudden Bob, lately known for quite a lot of folky, hopp-along-type-of-song, writes something which (to my mind) goes quite into the direction of someone like Rammstein or Phillip Boa & the Voodoo Club. (If you don't know these two German bands but like the song, check them out. I know that Rammstein's lyrics are very controversial, walking the tight-rope between being right wing or being not by being lyrics which are meant to be ironic and provoking but sadly seem to miss the point with much of their young and not very questioning audience. But most of you - not being all that fluent in German, I guess - will be able to happily and fully ignore the lyrics anyway!) The songs is all drums, rhythm and beats and as much 21st century as it can get! The song is kind of split into three parts, each of them coming up with more and new surprising beats and rhythms. Sometimes it sounds like a smoke-filled, strobe-lit Manhatten Gay Club, at other times like the soundtrack to a kick-fighting Lara Croft, then again it's the beat of a bikini-lined, sweating, bead and hip-swinging Barbados' Crop Over Street Parade. Vicious! (Imagine Bob duetting with Garbage's Shirley Manson on this one and you're talking The Full Monty!) The song seems to be about a place called Harbo which all my various atlases fail to guide me to. If this is what this place sounds like and someone manages to find it - let me know: I want to go!

INSIDE YOUR HEAD is the song which has so far been talked / written about the most. Thanks to its lyrics that is. They're blunt to the point of hurting: You've got the gold, I got the lead / What the fuck is going on inside your head. I won't go any further - the lyrics do. Musically the song is quite the opposite. For the first part equipped with nothing more than one electric guitar and a brief harmonica solo, the rattling of tea cups and spoons, some laughing, whistling and the occasional solo applause is audible throughout most of the song. I don't know, but for me the picture of a totally bored bingo hall audience listening to some unwelcome interval entertainment is what's springing to mind. With the second verse, the song picks up quite a bit, other instruments joining in et al but overall the bingo hall feeling remains. The gap between lyrics and music couldn't be much wider - I guess that was the idea.

10:15 Last song on the album, beautiful and is all about the new love Bob seems to have found in life. Starting off with the always fondly remembered sound of the empty groove of a vinyl, it remains very calm and quiet throughout the whole song. It's one of those songs which sound so simple - but wait until you sit down and try writing one of them! Lovely harmonies, a picked guitar and some very sexual lyrics.
A great ending to a great album which I really hope is the beginning for a lot more music to come out of Bob, who's has been so very business-minded lately. I'm sure he's great at running travel agencies, TV production companies and stuff, but  - theoretically - that's something everyone can learn. Even I got my mind around some very businessy (or should that be busi-messy?!) stuff these days but song-writing, that's something that you're born with or not. I'm not. Bob is!

Last but not least something about the artwork which I think is extraordinary and one of the best I have seen in a long time. Apart from the fact that the whole booklet is 20 pages of extremely thick paper (I know what these extras cost, believe me!) the graphic work is one of an artist rather than a layouter. It's mostly pastel colours, some black and white pictures which - as far as I can tell - don't have much to do with anything Bob, some of them dyed. (Can you dye a picture or just clothes? Don't know, they're single-coloured black and whites anyway - you'll see.) A couple of drawings of Bob, one photo and a hilarious picture of his band which - take by bet! - was shot during the Football (soccer - for you Americanos!) World Championship in America in 1994. Just looking at the picture you would assume this band to be called something like the Idiot Manic Road Hogs. As we know, they're not!

 - Corinna.