Critter Jams

This Monday marked the passing of Terry Hall at the age of 63. I know we’re in an era where the stars of the 70s and 80s are dropping like flies but still it’s a little shocking since Terry was still fairly young. Well, younger than my parents, at least. It’s easy to forget that The Specials formed while he was still a teenager – imagine making that sort of mark on the world fresh out of high school. To be honest I never got too into that band – not their fault, but they really did leave a big mark on the stuff I got really sick of in the 90’s. That first Specials album is classic but I never really want to listen to it. He does have one album that I really did like though and it’s this one right here.

I discovered this through an MP3 blog which hyped it up as some great, unsung masterpiece. Which also happened to be quite rare. Of course this album isn’t exactly unsung nor is it hard to come by; my local shop had it for six bucks (to be fair, the CDs were kind of a limited run). But I didn’t know better. I quite disliked the first song “Thinking Of You” (for what it’s worth, I like it now…) but “Faint Hearts” really grabbed my attention. And thus, Virgins and Philistines became one of those one-offs I just became completely obsessed with for a while.

This was also my Depeche Mode phase. So I guess you could say I was getting into music for disaffected young men who’d felt betrayed by the world. Not that I could really relate back then but there’s a particular bitterness to this album that resonated with me. It’s for those who are going through breakups, or maybe those who weren’t really liked by anyone in the first place. Words like “agony” and “misery” appear a lot. Even the happier songs are dripping with sarcasm; “Thinking of You” is one of those tunes that feels overly sappy and romantic up until you actually pay attention to the lyrics. But it works because Terry Hall has that certain charm to him. It’s not like the Billy Corgan thing. He seems like a good chap, just someone who’d been wronged a few too many times. If you know his backstory then you know this is quite literally the case.

To be honest it was more about the music than the lyrics. In the mid-80’s while most popular artists were going buck wild with drum machines and Fairlights there was also this sort of pastoral, return-to-reality movement going on. It was probably exemplified best by XTC’s Skylarking but this album is up there too. A lot of this is just about making pretty sounds but it’s got some damn good tunes on it. My version is sort of a bastardized American release which includes some of their early singles and cuts “Armchair Theater”, which is a shame. I dig the band’s first single (“The Colour Field”) a lot, along with “Pushing Up the Daisies”, which has that aggressive acoustic attack that the band does really well. It also has a cover of “Can’t Get Enough Of You Baby” which is eh, whatever. Smash Mouth ruined that song forever, sorry. Much better is the cover of “Hammond Song” by the Roches which is just about as gorgeous as can be. You wouldn’t think the dude from The Specials would be capable of something like that. Other highlights – “Castles in the Air”, “Faint Hearts”, the title track, and yes, even “Thinking of You”, which still manages to lodge itself in my head all the time. There are a few more embarrassing moments – pouty stuff like “Take” and “Sorry”, plus a goofy vegetarian anthem (“Cruel Circus”) which undercuts itself at every turn. But the band is good enough that all this goes down smoothly anyway.

Like most of Terry Hall’s projects, it didn’t last. They did release one more album called Deception, which is way more plastic and synth heavy. Maybe there are some good tunes on it, but I haven’t really revisited it to find out. Mostly I just know it as the album that rips off the cover of New Order’s Low Life, though to be fair you could argue that Low Life stole Terry Hall’s look, so maybe it’s just payback. I don’t really know anything he did after that but I’d always intended to give it all a listen. Even if you ignore all that the dude fronted three successful groups by the time he was in his mid 20’s which I think puts him in pretty rare territory. Unfortunately by the looks of it he suffered from a lifelong battle with depression which wound up derailing things after that. Bez wrote about him a bit in his book and painted him as a man who was in a very weird place in the late 80s. Hopefully he’s in a better one now. Happy 2023, y’all.