I’ve been doing a lot of listening to The Streets’ new album Computers and Blues and I’m really enjoying it.
I find that there are very few tracks which immediately jump out at me on albums of this genre: it’s always more about the lyrics than the catchy tunes, and one has to hear them a few times to get the full benefit. Mike Skinner’s use of metaphors at every available opportunity means that there’s a hidden meaning in almost every line and always something more to interpret.
OMG is a great track, the subtext being the ironic lack of face to face communication between young people in the facebook age.
It also gives me the opportunity to test this new Soundcloud Shortcode plugin from Johannes Wagener.
Our hero (Skinner), is devastated to log in to Facebook and find that the potential object of his affections has listed herself as being “in a relationship”.
Looked at your photos, of folks i didn’t know,
Folks I hadn’t noticed seem close to you now.
We’d been hangin’ out a lot,
I gathered that would have to stop.
Skinner’s reaction to this news is very much in the same vein as Dry Your Eyes: upset and downcast, but already accepting that nothing ever lasts forever and that he now has to move on:
All that build up for me,
All the weeks of us walking past tree after tree.
All the patience and doubt; the elation at maybe.
May as well bow: you’re in a relationship now.
Here’s the song, via somekindofawesome on Soundcloud:
http://soundcloud.com/somekindofawesome/the-streets-omg
However, there is a happy ending, which is also cleverlydescribed in perfect Facebook terminology:
Then what did i spy, I punched the f**king sky,
Among the normally ignorable requests at the right,
I’d of never of guessed there was a request so nice,
Now if you look at my status,
I’m in a relationship too… with you.
All’s well that ends well, I guess, although I don’t see much future in said relationship if these important pieces of news have to be discovered on Facebook.
But maybe that’s the way things are going now.