GoodBooks - 'Passchendaele'
Passchendaele, a major World War One battle, is known for its extreme goriness and is held up as one of the most singularly identifiable examples of how horrifying the conflict was. There were actually three battles of Passchendaele but I suspect trying to identify between one rancid, tragic waste of human life and another three months later is unnecessary outside the pages of military history textbooks. I have to admit, this is not the sort of thing which, upon hearing about, I'd think 'blow me, better write a jaunty pop song about that'.
Nevertheless, clearly someone in the Goodbooks camp had that thought. Delivered in a nearly-monotonal tone of politeness, this song charts the short life of a 25-year-old man killed in the battle, ending with the death of his son in World War II, falling from a Spitfire. Whether the man really existed or not the story is told plainly, gently explained rather than shouted, with no embroidery or elaboration. The illustration is obvious; the First World War was meant to be "the war to end all wars" and the second was meant to definitely put everything to bed, yet we're still fighting each other.
Good, then, popstars have History GCSEs too. We all know that war is bad and making more war is worse and that if we'd all just stop being horrible to each other all the time, we might get a lot more done. The way in which this song delivers the point is, I suppose, intended to be clever and subtle and the first few times I listened to it, I thought it was a complaint about the inevitability of modern life - a path set forward: you get a job, you get married, you have kids, you die and that the war was meant to be a metaphor more than anything else. I realised eventually that it was literal, though and the song promptly lost some of its charm.
It is clever, to a certain extent but it seems very much more in love with its own cleverness (“oh look everyone this is not the sort of thing you expect as an anti-war song- we iz pioneerz, y/y?â€) than its message and while presumably the point is to illustrate the absurdity of fighting wars, I'm not sure it actually tackles the fact that their inevitability is a myth or whether it's just mourning human stupidity with a frustratingly superior pseudo-outsider's eye.
Which is a shame, overall, because I'd like to like it - the attempt at political cleverness is appreciated, at least and the song itself is one of those indietronica affairs that ticks along very nicely indeed. I think its downfall might be that the singer doesn't throw himself hard enough into the faux-nostalgia of the story, so you know it's going to be a sad affair from the start and that takes away a lot of the impact, I think.
Still, it's hummable and the video's had a few bob spent on it, so marks for trying, eh, lads?
Download: Out now
CD Released: July 16th
(Hazel Robinson)
Comments
It seems to me that World War I based pop hasn't really moved on since the heady days of Jona Lewie.
I notice one of their other songs is called Leni. Is that as in Riefenstahl? Maybe they are getting a bit obssessed with the whole era, unless they want to record a song with Bryan Ferry of course.