TVP review for Reservoir
Glasgow’s The Reservoir wanted people to review some stuff so I wrote a review - here it is in all its turgid glory…
(the reservoir music site will be back up soon we are told)
Television Personalities - My Dark Places, on Domino records 2006
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It’s 2006 and to save us from Babyshambles with some real shambling it’s the Television Personalities again! Mixing a determined punk attitude with those stereotypical English things feyness, whimsy and being amateurish. If you have not heard of them, and they are still a bit obscure, by far the key member of all the line ups is singer and songwriter Dan Treacy. With a band name that sneered at reality TV culture back at a time when Alan Partidge was probably still enjoying life, Television Personalities began as part of the spiky blossom that was the late 70s British punk scene, their first record in 1978 featured the witty and jaunty “Part Time Punks”. Since then they have released several albums of lo-fi punky, prickly, part-time pop - and become a fave of many respected music lovers, like Stephen Pastel, Alan McGee and John Peel, as well as acquiring a tribute album from floppy C86 combos.
The TVPs’ Dark Places involve pills, crack, Orange one-to-one(!), ex-girlfriends, bitter asides/cliches, bits of arguments, all-too-brief hopes and sweet dreams and the persisting pain of being bullied at school. Things go “all Pete Tong” in the world of Treacy and “good things never last”. Against this, the songs are somehow assembled by dolorous piano figures that come and go alongside melodicas, guitar fuzz, drum patterns, providing the backdrop for the closely miked vocals.
Tunes never seem to properly start, rock out or finish. Neither, it is plain, were they intended to. A drum machine seems to have been casually flicked on for a part of a song, then just as lazily turned off. Puerile puns like “Uptown top wanking” (whereby the singer turns despairingly on an earlier quoting of “strictly roots”) and playground melodies pepper the tracks, but there are also some lovely lyrical bursts, and the sustained mood of “Knock it all Down” is a nice highlight. The song’s King loses his crown and gets it back, all to a stately dirge of a beat. After reading about Dan Treacy’s experiences with the law, homelessness and addiction over the past decade, it is all the more evocative listening. The spoken jottings (words here are rarely sung) amount to a fragmented journal of a difficult existence.
There are also several humorous bits that Coldplay et al could learn a thing or too from - “They’ll have to catch us first” is a great little Mario Kart themed romp. “Velvet underground” is a pleasing, jonathan richman/modern lovers homage - LOL! Occasionally I found Treacy’s accent grating, but, and the affected tone doesn’t sit well for me with the relentless satire.
Of course the album does sound like earlier TVP records, but at the same time not really being as impressive overall, but this is original and unsettling music (”All The Young Children On Smack, All The Young Children On Crack”), and treats listening well with its show of sheer difference.