Sock Free Hideaway

BEATS OF LOVE

89. See No Rain by The Ya Ya's

RECALL PAUL Newsome milling around Royton with his guitar way back in the mid-eighties as I walked home from school. I must have had detention. He also had really great hair. 

Our paths only began to cross on the train many years later as I headed from town whilst he was heading to it. He still had really great hair. His band Proud Mary should've been my bag, but something sounded a little stiff, which is unforgivable in any bar-room-boogie-type rock band. Not sure whether it was just Greg's Americanesque accent when he sings, or the band itself. Either way, I was left a little cold. 

I know they blamed some ill timed assistance from Noel Gallagher for not taking off big, but in truth, they were less than the sum of their parts and all sound like nothing more than stable session players. Paul's solo effort, Electric and Palms replete with Elvis's backing singers, The Sweet Inspirations, was much better crafted. Showcasing a more restrained palette with the emphasis on soul and not rock and roll. Consequently, it still sounds a little self-consciously cosmic in all the wrong places. In fact, it's nothing more than the album Gallagher is still striving to make. 

The last time I saw Paul, he was enthusing about his life in LA whilst I was talking up British jazz. The lucky bastard still had really great hair. The Ya Ya's, Paul's first band, should've been his big breakthrough, but remained a local phenomenon. By local, I mean Royton and Roscoe Street in Oldham. This  prophetic seven is getting scarce. The stiffness in his unconfident vocal delivery is instantly forgivable in any casual-indie band. And his brother's backing vocals are really strong. Lifting what is otherwise a fairly pedestrian song and making it into something well worth spinning. 

With so many musical careers sounding infinitely better when played back in reverse, ignoring anything other than debut singles, I have to pick up the brilliant Movement is Key twelve by Marcus McGowan to reassure myself that I'm not just stuck in some fanciful time-warp. I'm not.