Keeley Really : Why Can't You Say I Look Nice When I Look Nice?/Sleeperman (Chippy Records)
Sleeperman’s prolific releases continue apace through their own singles club. My back is turned and two more gems emerge from the Chippy Records HQ – each cementing Sleeperman’s engaging identity as a band whose music is elegantly and accessibly crafted, with lyrics of nostalgia and social comment striking symphonies with half-centurians like myself.
“Keeley Really” – the featured track of their April release – recounts the life of Keeley, a 24-year-old single mum of three. Interspersed with the humour – “She’s in the garden overdoing her Harpham suntan ‘til her legs look like she dipped them in a chip pan” is an impassioned encouragement for Keeley to make the best of her life – “But life’s too short for low-fat spread – butter both sides and have jam on it instead…..life can’t be all weekdays and no weekends”.
“Keeley Really” is a difficult track to eclipse, but for me its companion – “The Places That We Knew Before Are Not Those Places Anymore” achieves this with an effortless grace. John Hilton’s evocative vocal plaintively depicts the loss of a love to the passing years – and the bewildering disappearance of time itself. A line that follows a moment of whimsy with the crushing but inevitable slap of the present – “We went through a dream phase – a ‘Come On Eileen’ phase – with no idea that these would turn into the old days”.
May’s offering – “Why Can’t You Say I Look Nice When I Look Nice?” immediately signals that the eighties indie kids still like to christen their songs with the long head-swivelling titles of yore in their middle age. The first verse characterises the relationship as comfortable but stale – “I feel like you’re married to yourself and I’m just around”. Later the song reminisces on the beginning of their union – not afraid of a corny humourism – “They got together at school, shared a bench in the laboratory – he told her it was chemistry” – but their ride back from their first trip together hit the rocks when they “broke down on the way back somewhere near Oswestry”. Has Oswestry ever been mentioned in a song before? Answers on a postcard – and I will forward them to the Oswestry Tourist Information Centre.
Again though – despite this track’s undeniable beauty, the pick of all these Sleeperman songs is its - if you like – B-Side – the sublime – “She Was The First Girl In Our Street To Dye Her Hair” – regaling the tale of Jennifer – the neighbour with the rebellious nature - and possibly an innocent harbinger of doom. The vignettes in this song are exquisite. The aftermath of Carl jumping off the church roof and breaking his ankles is charmingly hilarious – “Before he cried he laughed pretending not to care – we wheeled him home on Graham Sinclair’s bike and left him there”. By the final chorus, Jennifer’s predilection for disaster is obliquely and sparingly narrated. The subtle change of lyric at the song’s coda is hauntingly unsettling.
There are seven more Sleeperman singles due this year. Lyrics that encompass the ultimate expertise in wit and resigned melancholia, with sympathetic and immaculately structured musicianship. And the annoying thing about Sleeperman – is that they make it look so bloody easy.
Lee McFadden 31/5/18
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