"Better Things" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year or Portions For Foxes series. See the introduction for more.
This is one of the greatest driving songs I know, by a band I loved for their three records but think has been completely forgotten in the thirty years since.
And that paragraph actually refers two different songs by the Screaming Blue Messiahs. I originally wrote this post about one of them, and now I'm going back to switch it to the other one.
So you may like Big Brother Muscle better - I almost did. If I was less committed to the one-song-a-week thing, I'd list them both here.
The Screaming Blue Messiahs came out of nowhere - as I understand it, they were all British, all veterans of multiple bands that sort-of or almost made it, all middle-aged in 1986 when their first record Gun Shy came out. The best song on Gun Shy is Twin Cadillac Valentine, and I'm going back, about a week after originally "finalizing" this post, to write about that song.
It's a song about cars, about driving, snarled over a driving beat, staring out with a unique chiming noise, as if to tell you these guys have arrived. The Messiahs were a power trio, and that power comes out really starkly here.
It's near-apocalyptic in the middle, ominous and unsettling - almost random lines and images. What does it all mean? Is it telling a specific story? Forget all that.
What do you do: get in the car
This is a loud, insistent, jangling rock song, setting off at top speed and lighting out for the territory. Punch the gas and go along with it.
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