In the spirit of getting other people to write my posts for
me, here’s C to help us ponder why we don’t / can’t laugh the way we did when
we were young…
I'm not much of a laugh-out-loud type of person! - but oh I
miss those helpless giggles that make your eyes water and your stomach ache and
definitely seem to have disappeared with age - though very occasionally they do
appear and when they do it feels so SO good. It's always the odd things that do
that, abstract things somehow that tickle me, so humour in songs can fall a bit
short and I do think it's a bit of an acquired taste. Having said that, your
post straight away reminded me of one humour song that I've liked since first
hearing it - sure you know it... From 1993 but (of course) still very much
relevant today…
Ah yes, I had that one on CD single, C. I was a big fan of
Dennis Leary back when he used to do those short, angry MTV videos. It was a
more mainstream version of what Bill Hicks was doing, and it appealed to my
Angry Young Man phase back in the early 90s.
I decided to do a bit of research into why I can’t laugh at
things like I used to, and I found an article in The
New York Post that says we start to lose our sense of humour at age 23! So
I reckon it’s long gone for most of us now.
Childhood is often carefree. Adulthood often isn’t. The
average 4-year-old, the authors write, laughs as many as 300 times a day. The
average 40-year-old will take two and a half months to log that many
chuckles.
Apparently having a job is one of the main reasons we stop
laughing so much. That, and all the added responsibilities of adulthood –
mortgage, bills, children et al.
The good news is, if we live long enough (and live far
enough into our retirement years to overcome the trauma of adulthood), this
chart suggests our ability to laugh will return…
I dunno… I look at my Mum. She doesn’t have a lot to laugh
about these days. Confined to the house, eyesight almost gone, scared to leave
her chair in case she has another fall, carers coming in to get her up in the
morning and put her to bed at night… as she approaches 100, I’m not sure she’s
laughing the way she did when she was 25. That said, my Mum’s always had a good
sense of humour, and the fact that she still has it at 97, despite all she has
to cope with… I think that’s amazing. I doubt I’ll be in such good spirits if
I’m lucky enough to live that long.
As the title of this series reminds us, laughter is great
for our mental health. Can we get it back into our lives? The investigation
continues…
Maybe there's also some mileage in wondering why we find offensive words so amusing. And pondering the difference between asshole and arsehole... is one funnier than the other? Or does it entirely depend on context?
More aurally pulchritudinous delights from the year they insisted on naming after Jack Bauer's missions...
6. Orville Peck - Stampede
He dresses like the Lone Ranger and has the singing chops of Johnny Cash and Chris Isaak. But who is that masked man?
South African (now living in the US) alt-country star Orville Peck is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a pair of cowboy boots. He's not afraid to push boundaries and buttons, sometimes using country music to champion gay rights (pretty ballsy considering America's current swing back to conservatism, as mentioned by John Grant earlier in this list), but he's equally good at playing it "straight" musically, in terms of genre. His third album is a collaborative duets effort, on which Orville manages to drag in an impressive array of confederates, from Willie Nelson, Margo Price and Beck to Elton and Kylie, making each artists' contribution true to their own musical background. Or, as he puts it...
"I wanted to make sure that every single song on the album felt like a true 50/50 collaboration of me and the other artists' style and sound and genre. I didn't want to just feel like a bunch of Orville Peck songs that feature verses from other artists. I wanted each one to be an actual collaboration. Every single song on the album is entirely its own thing, dependent on who the artist is. It's a really fun journey. It's definitely the most adventurous I've ever been in terms of genre. It's some of the most country songs I've ever done on this album and some of the least country songs I've ever done on this album."
A large number of these tracks have become essential companions this year (even the more obvious covers like Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting and Rhinestone Cowboy), but the record's so diverse I'm struggling to choose the best song... or even most representative.
Look, I don't care if it was forty years ago When you won high school spelling bee What are you even talking about? Not everybody can spell hippopotamus And that's at least something you can hang on to I can't even understand you with that thing on your face Margo, you sure take the O out of country And you put the L in stupid
In the end, I'm settling for this purely on the basis of the video...
5. English Teacher - This Could Be Texas
The last time I included a Mercury Prize winner in my personal list of the year's best albums was way back in 2011 (PJ Harvey, to save you the googling). That's how unhip I am. And yet, for some strange reason, I was ahead of the curve when it came to English Teacher. Could be that I was simply taken by the band name? Or the fact that they hail from my neck of the woods (lead singer Lily Fontaine was born in Huddersfield and grew up just over the Pennines in Colne, and the record made waves for being the first Mercury winner in 9 years not to come from London)?
Musically, the indie-art-punk twanging isn't a million miles away from Florence Shaw and Dry Cleaning, but the lyrics are much more personal, dealing with questions of cultural identity in a touching, honest and humorous fashion.
I am the world's biggest paving slab But no one can walk over me I am the Pendle Witches, John Simm And I am Lee Ingleby I am the Bank of Dave, Golden Postbox And the festival of R&B I'm not the terrorist of Talbot Street But I have apocalyptic dreams
You should see my armoury
4. Wolves Of Glendale - Wolves Of Glendale
From the sublime then, to the ridiculous. I challenge you to scour the whole of the blogosphere and find anyone else who has included Wolves of Glendale in their year end countdown.
I offer no defence except that this record made me grin like nothing else this year, and I listened to it for far longer than I probably should have...
If you're in any way appreciative of that, it might be worth pointing you towards a new song they put out a little while back... hopefully a taster for album 2.
The latest Mercury Rev album is a bit of a curiosity. A reworking of Bobbie Gentry's second album, The Delta Sweete, it sees regular Rev vocalist Jonathan Donohue hand over his mic to a stellar range of guests, including Norah Jones, Phoebe Bridgers, Beth Orton, Margo Price, Vashti Bunyan and Lucinda Williams. This patchwork quilt of a tribute album shouldn't really work, and I half-expected to be grumbling that "none of them (even Lucinda) can hold a torch to Bobbie's originals", yet I've found myself getting sucked in with progressive listens.
As you'd expect from a Mercury Rev record, the arrangements are lush and sparkly and trippy, like something out of a dream, a hallucination, or a David Lynch film. For the most part, the guest vocalists rise to the occasion, either by being faithful to Bobbie's interpretations... or, particularly in Lucinda's case, being true to themselves. Actually, Lucinda is given the toughest draw - a cover of Ode To Billy Joe, which wasn't even on the original album but... well, it's Ode To Billie Joe. How could they resist?
Only occasionally does the odd vocalist betray her more contemporary roots by indulging in the kind of histrionics favoured by modern chart divas and X-Factor contestants... but I won't name names. Bobbie wouldn't approve. For the most part though, I think she'd be pretty chuffed with this tribute. We may never know, since she's shunned the celebrity life for over 40 years now. But let's at least hope she earns a few pennies towards her retirement from this...
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