Pint O' Stella Overdrive

I realised recently that "musketeer" means "soldier with a musket". Kind of blindingly obvious, right? But I'd never made the connection before. Speaking of an interest in words, here's a review of Oxford's top rockingest librarian, Richard Ramage's last vinyl outing.

THE RELATIONSHIPS – SPACE (Big Red Sky)


“We grew weary of boutiques…”

It’s not often we make much mention of lyrics in our reviews - mostly because there are hardly any good lyricists, in Oxfordshire or beyond – but The Relationships’ Richard Ramage is a truly outstanding writer, and this LP is his best batch yet, as Captain Beefheart might observe. All you need to know about Ramage’s poetic incision is present in the record’s opening line: yes, it’s a wry summation of mood changes at the end of the 60s, but it’s the immaculately affected tone of the word that makes “grew weary” infinitely better than “got tired”, revealing just how well honed the writing is. The song it introduces, “Space Race”, is an odd image of an “alternate present”, as SF aficionados would have it, a quick sketch of a Britain that diverged from our history at that very moment of “weariness”, and beat the Yanks to the moon. “We were singing Rule Britannia as we conquered space”, declaims the chorus, but despite this huge difference in our pasts, the UK of “Space Race” feels remarkably similar to our own, a floundering nation buoyed up by misty celebrations of past achievement:

The flag and the flower
Designs on a dishcloth
The Post Office Tower
Is ready for liftoff
It’s a golden age

This is roughly “This Is A Low”, Blur’s gorgeous realisation that the Britain they and so many others have celebrated is nothing but a fumble of nostalgia and faded souvenirs, with a sci fi twist. Or, perhaps it’s Philip K Dick’s Man In The High Castle redrafted by Philip Larkin.

Astronautical subject matter aside, “Space Race” is a wonderful opener to the album, because it introduces the record’s themes of imagined pasts, escapism and secret worlds. It is swiftly followed by “Soft Rock Canyon”, a more earthbound tale of a bored suburban girl dreaming of a mythical America, with its imagined freedoms and its balmy summer nights. Tim Turan’s drums on this are lovely, incredibly busy and jazzy and – amusingly – a fair few leagues away from a soft rock pulse.

“Her Constituency” is another standout track, featuring another hazily created utopian England and a hustings romance that sees the narrator seemingly as in love with his political paramour as he is with his conception of democracy. The love interest MP (whom we can’t help imagining as Barbara Castle…though of course she could easily be Maggie) enters the song “stately as a galleon, my lady all in jewels and shells” making her seem like some rural seat version of Boticelli’s Venus. Later we hear of “Spices from the New World/ A fanfare from the morning sun”, which continues the lush Renaissance imagery, although the ironic reality at this election meal would probably some coronation chicken sandwiches on a church hall trestle table.

The romance – albeit a quiet drawing room romance built on respect and companionship, rather than passion – seems inextricably bound up with national feeling, and again we have an image of a lost world, a Britain in which politics is always fair, humane and egalitarian, and the best woman wins.

“Victorian Seance” (featuring the best use of the word “antimacassars” in pop history) makes the other worlds theme literal, and “Time In The World” begins with the line, “We lived in the garden”, wafting up images of Cottingley fairies and childhood hideaways. It’s a song about growing up, and could be a rewrite of “Hide And Seek”, from the last LP, as told from the inside, a realisation that childhood can never be regained as explained by the kids who “moved to London”. The claim that they “put up a map of Middle Earth” in the hidey hole is doubly distancing – a fictional land as worshipped by a long lost innocent hippy breed.

Throughout these wonderful songs a series of paeans for lost nations are created, countries of jeeps and melodic rock, countries of crumpets and curates unfurling the bunting, countries of Empire pink starcharts tacked up in studies. They’re all presented with the mixture of melancholy and national pride that suffuse tales of King Arthur or Robin Hood, and are all delivered in an understated poetic hush. Stipe meets Betjeman, if you will.

Even by The Relationships’ standards, the music is mostly unadventurous, a mixture of classic indie winsomeness and 60s simplicity. This doesn’t mean it’s unpleasant, and there are some notably lovely chiming guitar parts from Angus Stevenson, but anybody who’s heard previous Relationships records should find themselves on very common ground. Also, perhaps “Clockwork Toy” and “Astrological Hotel” are somewhat forgettable. However, as the record finishes with “The Eternal Colonel”, an upwardly surging bundle of psychedelic pop which is essentially a comfy Oxford remake of The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” (and should therefore have been called “Five Mile Drive”), perhaps The Relationships shall have some musical surprises for us next time. So long as they keep writing pop songs as gorgeous and intelligent as these, any exciting arrangements are just a bonus. We shall never grow weary of them.