Thursday, July 23, 2015

Songs About People # 111 Dan Treacy


As someone shuttling ever nearer towards my second half century and the remainder of my days I sometimes look at 'young peoples music' with some bewilderment as I'm supposed to. I know that many of these artists are in thrall to the music I grew up with in the eighties, much of which was equally under the spell of stuff from two decades before that, most particularly the sixties. It leads to a strange, refracted effect listening to it. Like stumbling down a hall of mirrors. Or perhaps that's just an effect of age too.

Such is the case with MGMT who I've been listening to over the past day or so. They are, or at least were, an enormous, globally popular band a few years back. Many of their most popular songs, generally drawn from their first album Oracular Spectacular have amassed millions of Spotify hits which is as good a measure of such things as anything else. With a couple of exceptions, (I loved a couple of tracks), I listened to it earlier with some bemusement. I'm not quite sure what they were trying to do and why it hit such an overwhelming commercial bullseye while to me sounding like so much aimless bluster. Perhaps I should persevere, though I imagine I won't. 

For their second record, 2010's Congratulations they clearly took a step back from fame to the things they most loved, much of which seemed to be 1980's British-based, independent psychedelic whimsy. Inspired most obviously by Felt, The Monochrome Set and The Television Personalities. A smaller vision, but for me a much warmer and more lovable one. Here's their fine tribute to The Television Personalities leader Dan Treacy, a man not afraid to drop a name or two himself. The song is very much in the spirit of his own stuff. It comes across as a plea to respect individualism and eccentricity which I imagine we should all do our bit to get behind.



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