All entries for Sunday 06 December 2009

December 06, 2009

Depressed Handle II

What does it take to depress a door handle?

Especially when the door handle is between you and freedom? Do inanimate objects care about music? The sceptical might point out that handles have no ears. The sceptical also like to point out that ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’ is just a load of melodramatic teen angst but they are wrong (apart from season 4 which is a bad as they suggest).

So I tried some depressing music on the door handle.

Now there are some who regard this album, Radiohead’s OK Computer, as depressing. Naturally this fails to account for the anger, satire and humour in the album, none of which is all that depressing really. Perhaps it is too easy to label Radiohead depressing. Anyway the door handle was unconvinced of the lazy stereotype and remain solidly un-depressed.

So I tried an album which actually is depressing, albeit whilst at the same time being very very good.

The Holy Bible by Manic Street Preachers. A testament to the state of mind of the very depressed lyricist Richey Edwards. Graphic, visceral and hard in parts to listen to, it’s a modern masterpiece of melancholy.

The door handle was unmoved.

Perhaps it really was deaf and cared not for music? Who’d have guessed that blasting music at a door would not result in it opening!?

But wait! What’s this?

Why yes! It’s When It’s All Over We Still Have To Clear Up by Snow Patrol. Most people won’t have heard of this album. That’s because it was made in the old days when Snow Patrol hadn’t yet become the biggest indie sellouts of the decade. I don’t normally care for indie bands selling big as long as it doesn’t change them too much, but Snow Patrol sold out completely after ‘Run’, removing all the quirky and weird and genuinely emotional bits which this album highlights so well. They barely even play any tracks off it live anymore.

It’s depressing because this album stands a document to a top little band, lost in a sea of selling out and X Factor covers. It is a relic of the before-time, before one of my least favourite musical developments of the decade.