A GUEST SERIES by STRANGEWAYS
Close-Up: The Cinerama Singles #10 – LP Tracks Imaginary Compilation Album Takeover
Almost there.
This Cinerama ICA complements and completes the singles/B-sides posts. Perversely, only LP tracks were permitted entry. Why? Because it takes the singles series up to an even ten entries and also provides an excuse to air a broader scope of Cinerama songs.
The banning of numbers previously covered across the singles series made this ICA significantly easier to compile, albeit 16 tracks had still to be whittled down to the ten that follow. They’re all drawn from the three LPs of original Cinerama material: Va Va Voom, Disco Volante, and Torino.
Here goes – and I promise, I’ll try not to sound like ChatGPT.
Side 1
And When She Was Bad (Torino 2004, Scopitones)
This opens the Torino album with an intake of breath that called way back to George Best’s first song Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft. And for Cinerama fans this may have been the track that most directly announced a shift to a more familiar, more guitar-led era. It’s a quiet/loud/quiet mini-epic, and a terrific statement-song with which to begin the 2004 album.
As an addendum, just missing this ICA’s cut was Two Girls, the rampant belter that, with barely a pause, follows And When She Was Bad. That song would further confirm Cinerama heading in a predominantly faster, darker and noisier direction.
Après Ski (Disco Volante, 2000, Scopitones)
Looking for an elegant song about awkward, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it age-gap sex? Well, you’re in luck. Here it is, complete with that adventure’s consequent complications, frustrations and disappointments. These are perhaps most pointedly referenced in the line She thought she’d turn a boy into a man, but in real life some things don’t go to plan.
Musically, chopping strings and warm brass sections contribute to making Après Ski, like a lot of the songs on Disco Volante, quite the defining Cinerama number.
Ears (Va Va Voom, 1998, Cooking Vinyl)
An oddity for this ICA given that this Va Va Voom track appeared, in an acoustic version over at the singles series. That was via its B-side status on the 2002 Quick, Before It Melts single. This is the proper, organ-heavy LP version though. As pondered earlier in these posts, Ears is arguably the finest cut on that first record and recounts the almost-comical Jarvis-style situation of listening, through the wall, to an ex-partner enjoying a new adventure. The addition of Emma Pollock’s opposing vocals – placed intentionally across David Gedge’s own delivery – lift this song high among the band’s ten best.
Close Up (Torino, 2004, Scopitones)
A kind of masochism and self-flagellation takes the lead in the diminutive Close Up. Here, a wronged lover demands to be told, in detail, of his partner’s infidelities. Though not precisely X-rated, the language in which these various requests are made doesn’t pull its punches either: Again, oh please just tell me again, and this time don’t fail to give me every last detail. I’m sincere, I really do wanna hear what was in your head when you had a stranger in our bed.
From the same LP, Tie Me Up is maybe one of Gedge’s most lyrically direct love songs, and it’s equally frank in its language and imagery. Both songs somehow manage to reference such matters in a mature way though – one that I reckon avoids being salacious or creepy.
Heels (Disco Volante, 2000, Scopitones)
On this Disco Volante track a slow build across strings and piano arrives at a zappy chorus – one led by the sing-along line I don’t really care that you’ve found another lover. (Translation: I do really care that you’ve found another lover).
For me, this song, which stars a magnetic but cruel femme-fatale casually crushing lovers beneath those eponymous heels, distils and defines Cinerama perfectly. Lyrically, it’s all here: glamour and sex. Obsession and rejection. Musically too, amid the strings and keys there’s even room to sneak in a smidgen of distorted guitar. Plus there’s that terrace stomp of a chorus. And all on the LP in which it’s arguable that the band, and the band’s ideal, became fully formed and perfectly presented.
Side 2
Maniac (Va Va Voom, 1998, Cooking Vinyl)
Rejection via ansaphone. Murderous introspection. And a kind of lyrical riddle: you’ll only see how much I’ve changed if you come back.
Maniac, the first track on Va Va Voom, might have opened the Cinerama LP account with a familiar theme, but gone were the Wedding Present’s overt guitars. Instead keyboards and orchestrated strings took the lion’s share. Well, this was a different band after all.
A slower-paced, rather more world-weary version is found on the group’s first John Peel Sessions collection (1998, Scopitones).
Hard, Fast and Beautiful (Va Va Voom, 1998)
Aired in the singles series in its Spanish-language B-side version (Dura, Rapida y Hermosa) this English original provides Va Va Voom’s huge, soaring heart. That’s thanks mainly to its consciously dramatic piano-led opening and lofty, kick-the-air chorus about that reliable pop trope: locating, then losing, The One.
Get Up And Go (Torino, 2004, Scopitones)
One of the finest Torino tracks, Get Up And Go begins, perhaps appropriately for the film-influenced Cinerama, with a tentative intro reminiscent of a Danny Elfman number. Lyrics then recount the irresistible and inconvenient trappings of infidelity: instant, unstoppable attraction. A swiftly deleted text. The emergency change of bedclothes the message instigates. Then the coldness of post-coital post-rationalisation.
Of particular note also is the song’s absolutely massive chorus. It combines, to great effect, strings of both the orchestral and distorted guitar variety.
Get Smart (Torino, 2004, Scopitones)
A corking Torino track. Its lyrics speak from the point of view of a cheated-on partner. But it refuses to offer a traditional pop response of broken-heartedness or even hatred. Instead, the wronged partner is imploring the song’s subject to conduct his/her clumsy and regular affairs with more care. That way, the adored relationship can at least continue via a sort of don’t ask/don’t tell arrangement.
Interestingly, this plea for subtlety is in direct opposition to Close Up’s demand for the unvarnished truth. No wonder people tell me all this love stuff is way too complicated to be bothering with.
146 Degrees (Disco Volante, 2000, Scopitones)
Of interest to, well no one really, this was the last track chosen for this ICA. It had come down to a car-park fight between Torino song Cat Girl Tights and this one: 146 Degrees, the Disco Volante opener.
The mundane truth is that going with Cat Girl Tights would have made the ICA too Torino-heavy. Also, 146 Degrees – so-named after the composite angle view of the Cinerama projection system that gave the band its name – is actually, production-wise, a pretty big, high-concept track. So its last-to-hop-on-the-bus status shouldn’t be seen as a comment on its quality.
Here, the lyrics pay homage to the song’s title, and concern themselves with a woman whose presence beguiles and bewitches onlookers by demanding, albeit unintentionally, that every eye in the house be trained upon her.
This idea of an effortlessly attractive female, around whom events revolve, occasions disrupt and arguments begin, is visited also in lyrics present in the fellow Disco Volante tracks Your Charms: So I’m always amused whenever you are left confused at being centre of attention and the playful Because I’m Beautiful: Everybody wants to know how every party seems to become my show.
Carried by a shimmering soundscape of flute, keys and what might be bongos – and with some fine Sally Murrell backing vocals – 146 Degrees was a grand way to kick off the second LP.
It’s also an appropriate track to accompany the flipping-up of seats and the sweeping-up of popcorn on this Cinerama journey. Next time, Jim returns to take us through the post-hiatus Wedding Present singles – an adventure that commenced in 2005.
So, for the final time, thank so much to JC for the space, and to anyone who’s taken the time to read all or some of this series and/or post a comment.
strangeways
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 