"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.
The Low and Sweet Orchestra was a supergroup, at least by my definition: a bunch of musicians who had other bands, and were reasonably successful in them, but they came together to do this project. And, like so many supergroups, they made one really good record and then disappeared entirely.
The record was 1996's Goodbye to All That. And, in a lineup of great songs, the one I want to praise the most is what was their single: A Nail Won't Fix a Broken Heart.
Wish we were dyin' holdin' hands
Alone just me and you
That's sad but it's true.
It's a breakup song, one of the purer ones. There's no animosity, no anger, no explanations, no history. It's just about the singer, telling us purely about his love and how it's gone forever. We don't even know for sure who initiated the breakup, though it's unlikely it was this guy - he's still smitten.
The instrumentation is gorgeous, in a folky way - the band was largely made up of members of the Pogues, backing the guy I knew as singer of Thelonious Monster - and it's one of those almost-perfect pop singles that sounds entirely like itself and nothing else.
And the title could be a saying you just never managed to hear before, something your grandmother might have said when you were young. (Maybe it was, maybe it is. It wouldn't surprise me.)
Maybe you'll find yourself saying it someday, giving advice or ruefully reminiscing. "A nail won't fix a broken heart, you know."
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