Friday, May 30, 2014

Land of the Long White Sound: day six

It's Friday! Friday night's alright for... blogging, I suppose. Shihad have better ideas, however, a night out in downtown Wellington with a hired car and their folks for a good old shindig. Deb's Night Out lyrically tells the story of a junkie friend of Jon Toogood's then-partner, who was unceremoniusly evicted from their house one wet night after showing her true colours. The video tells a different story, and it's one I love for it - so homely, so family. So Wellington - anyone who lives here now must struggle to recognise the much-changed or even vanished landmarks of lower Cuba Street and James Smith Corner, Courtenay Place, the golden mile.



Good lord it's hard to believe this song is nearly twenty years old. Crazy! Deb's Nght Out is off Killjoy, a stompy, highly regarded album in and of itself, and the of a crucial trio of albums that would develop Shiahd's sound from industrial metal through to the beginnings of a lucrative popular music period, culminating in their fourth album, my favourite of theirs, The General Electric.  

Killjoy has yet to grow on me, but I have always loved Deb's, the chugging rhythm, slightly-off looped drums and its growling background orchestral synth wash, very much indicating the broader influences that the band were going through at the time, including Bailter Space and The Skeptics. In fact, the video mix of Deb's Night Out doesn't fade out like the album track, but ends on the synths, recalling the coda to Skeptics' monumental Agitator. I don't think it's an accident.

Actually, this video, sourced from Juice TV (another much-changed Nineties phenomenon) cuts the end of the song off, and I can't believe this is the "official" version. Sort that out, Warners!!

Next time: let's end this on a high note. Oh My!

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