CLOSE-UP : THE CINERAMA SINGLES (Part 7)

A GUEST SERIES by STRANGEWAYS

Close Up: The Cinerama Singles #7 :  The Torino singles (2)

It’s 2002 and new Cinerama LP Torino is in the can and ready to go. So perhaps it’s safe to call Quick, Before It Melts – and not 2001’s Health and Efficiency – the album’s official lead-off single.

mp3: Cinerama – Quick Before It Melts

Either way Quick, Before It Melts is a winner, performing a similar trick to the previous single in terms of balancing orchestrated strings with a big, distorted guitar sound. Perhaps appropriately for a song whose title may well nod to the challenges around male virility, an extended version is found on the album.

Flips were, firstly, an acoustic version of arguably the finest track on debut LP Va Va Voom: Ears. This take works really well here and benefits greatly from some fine string arrangements and even a smidgen of Spanishy-sounding guitar plucking.

mp3: Cinerama – Ears (acoustic version)

Second B-side As If is terrific and a personal favourite, not least because of its crunchy lead guitar parts and lengthy instrumental coda. Your lyrics are the kind of exchanges you’d hear, so I’m told, through a juice glass pinned towards your neighbours’ bedroom walls. And who in all of indiedom writes that kind of stuff better?

mp3: Cinerama – As If

This was a busy old time for the band: a squint at Cinerama’s concertography reveals a fairly extensive tour in support of Torino, with the UK, Ireland and USA visited in the early autumn of 2002.

mp3: Cinerama – Careless

With its recurring slower-then-faster tempo and powerful blast of chorus-accompanying guitar, Careless was fine single material and, really, the natural option from the Torino tracks on offer. This then was the release that brought an end to the songs taken from Cinerama’s final album of original material.

But it wasn’t the last hurrah, as our next post will testify.

Back to Careless for now though. Your B-sides here were This Isn’t What It Looks Like and Sparkle Lipstick.

The former’s pleading title locates it deep inside a platonic relationship and the inevitable suspicions it’s provoked from the third party. Despite its slow start, This Isn’t What It Looks Like quickly becomes a breezy number, and one that benefits from some pleasant, leaping strings.

mp3: Cinerama – This Isn’t What It Looks Like

Listening to it now, after a while away, second B-side Sparkle Lipstick is quite the production. Strings and brass (synthesised or not) are present, although the star of the show is a huge, fuzzy-guitar-driven chorus.

mp3: Cinerama – Sparkle Lipstick

If you’ve not heard them, and even if you have, both these Bs are worthy of your time.

Of note on all of these Careless tracks is the contribution, her last for the band, of Sally Murrell. Here, SM’s backing vocals and accompaniments, as they did across many Cinerama releases, added something special and in a big way helped to define the group’s sound.

Next up will be a post that details the final Cinerama single on Scopitones – an A-side that bridged the present with both the past and the future. Not bad going for a pop song. We’ll also sweep up the singles material that would emerge several years after what you might call the official canon.

Do I need to thank JC and readers again? Of course I do.

strangeways