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Cupid & Psyche 2015
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Cupid & Psyche 2015 I'm well into music (listening to, that is; not performing, sadly. I come from a musical family but I've fallen well-short of carrying on that particular legacy). Anyway... Music that merely sounds good is great and all, but it's always a tremendous bonus to discover music that engages me on an intellectual level and makes me think about my perception of others and how I perceive myself. Which brings me to Scritti Politti. Formed in the UK in 1977, Scritti Politti is ostensibly a band, but is really a vehicle for one person: Scritti has gone through many personnel changes over the years, the one constant being Welsh-born singer/songwriter/lead guitarist, Green Gartside. Scritti started out as a left-wing post-punk band - lots of scratchy guitars and deep bass lines (not unlike early Public Image Ltd), with Green's witty, politically-infused undergraduate lyrics. Following a series of singles and EPs in the late 1970s, an off-kilter pop sensibility was evident in Scritti's superb debut album, 1982's Songs to Remember (best cuts: "The Sweetest Girl," "Lions After Slumber," "Jacques Derrida," and "Asylums in Jerusalem"). After suffering a nervous breakdown and a disillusionment with Marxism, and rediscovering a love of soul music, Green decided punk rock's orthodoxy against love songs was a restriction, and wasn't punk supposed to be about breaking down restrictions? Relocating to New York with a new line-up, Green released Scritti's masterpiece: Cupid & Psyche 85, an intrinsically 80s-sounding, utterly gorgeous soul/funk/synthpop masterpiece. It's damnably irresistible stuff: Green's catchy, sugary-sweet melodies and androgynous, Michael Jackson-esque falsetto vocals complimented by dense, bouncy musical arrangements. There's not a wasted track on the album, although I suppose you'd have to have a liking (and not just a tolerance) for undeniably dated 80s music to really appreciate it. Scritti released several more killer albums (1988's Provision, 1999's Anomie and Bonhomie and 2006's White Bread Black Beer), but Cupid & Psyche 85 remains Green Gartside's most sustained and perfect musical and lyrical statement. Anyway, I'm going somewhere with all this. Some years ago, my ex-GF and I parted on fairly amicable terms, only for me to fall head over heels for her once she had gone away (to no avail: she made it clear she and I weren't going to happen again, which kind of threw me into a depression that lasted years. I was very weak). If Cupid & Psyche 85 has a theme, it's the paradox of how, the more physically distant you are from the physical reality of a person, the more you fall in love with an idealised version of that person. In the album's fourth track, "A Little Knowledge," Green sings, "Now I know to love you is not to know you," and the pain of distance is cited in the seventh track, "Lover to Fall." Songs like "Absolute," "Don't Work That Hard," "Perfect Way," "Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)" and "Hynotize" are all emotive paeans to romantic love, Green listing all the things he can and will do to win love and affection. But the album's key track, thematically speaking, is "The Word "Girl"," a reggae-style number that became Scritti's highest-charting UK single ("Perfect Way," a big hit in the US, didn't chart nearly so high in its homeland). It's a pleasant but deceptive song, deconstructing pop music's tendency to idealise women and reduce them to male-gaze clichés ("girl" becoming an ideal rather than a flesh-and-blood entity). "The Word "Girl""" manages to be a sincere declaration of the feminine ideal as well as a castigation of male patronisation - in other words, an utterly feminist song. Sometimes the song is a comfort to me; other times it instils in me the disturbing notion that I'm incapable of falling in love with people - I can only fall in love with ideals of them. Did I become complacent with the reality of my ex-GF and only fall in love with my imagined version of her - her absent presence? And is my presence on adult dating sites indicative of my fear of romantic love, and my desire to know women in purely physical terms without the baggage of idealisation? (I understand I am probably being pretentious as all hell here...). THE WORD "GIRL" (Green Gartside/David Gamson) To do what I should do To long for you to hear I open up my heart And watch her name appear A word for you to use A girl without a cause A name for what you lose When it was never yours The first time baby that I came to you I'd do things that you want me to The second time baby that I came to you Oh you found my love for you The third time baby that I came to you Oh, oh, oh, I knew The last time baby that I came to you How your flesh and blood became the word A name the girl outgrew The girl was never real She stands for your abuse The girl is no ideal It's a word for what you do In a world of broken rules She found a place for you Along her chain of fools The first time baby that I came to you I'd do things that you want me to The second time baby that I came to you Oh you found my love for you The third time baby that I came to you Oh, oh, oh, I knew The last time baby that I came to you How your flesh and blood became the word Oh how Your flesh and blood Oh how Your flesh and blood Oh how Your flesh and blood Oh how Your flesh and blood Oh how Your flesh and blood Oh how Your flesh and blood Oh how Your flesh and blood... |
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I'm glad you enjoyed that entry - I wasn't entirely certain if it's the sort of thing one should write about on this site, but I felt like writing it anyway! If you're interested in (re?)discovering Scritti, I recommend the recent compilation, Absolute: The Best of Scritti Politti, which is a pretty good overview of Green's recorded output. But considering Scritti made only five studio albums, it wouldn't be tremendously difficult to check out all of them... If I can make some recommendations, listen to these cuts (in addition to the ones I mentioned before): From Provision: "Boom! There She Was," "Overnite," "Oh Patti (Don't Feel Sorry for Loverboy)," "Sugar and Spice" From Anomie & Bonhomie: "Umm," "Tinseltown to the Boogiedown," "Brushed with Oil, Dusted with Powder" From White Bread Black Beer: "The Boom Boom Bap," "Snow in Sun," "Am I Right in Thinking" Thanks for the reply! 
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