Yesterday evening the Boy asked me, "What's that?" when this CD started playing. (He still talks of Blondie.) I had to explain it was James, but not the James he knows.
I bought this solely for the "b-sides" — a nonsense term, since this was never released on a disc with more than one side. But "padding tracks" or "completist-bait" doesn't have quite the same ring.
Where You Gonna Run? and Long to be Right are definitely padding. Pleasant enough, but insubstantial, half-baked jams that could be outtakes from Wah Wah.
Your Story also feels unfinished, but it's a bit of a treat. I say unfinished, because although the couplet "Fuck me 'til I'm whole again / Fuck, I've lost my contact lens" is quite an entertaining crunch through the gears, Tim Booth doesn't have a history of that kind of thing. My pet theory is that the second line was improvised, waiting until he could think of something more profound and fitting, but then he gave up when the song was sidelined. Or the song was sidelined because Tim couldn't get the lyrics to a state he was happy with.
The lyrics in the state we have them seem like a kind of partner to Butterfly's Dream. That is, more obsessive desire for conquests, as in the refrain, "No one here makes me horny". My favourite bit — I don't know if it's the middle eight or whatever, because I've never got round to parsing the song's structure — is the bit where it bursts out,
Lover, we've just come through the ceiling
Kiss me then promise you'll stay
Lover, that's your essence I'm needing
I'll pay, I will pay
I listened to this on my self-compiled James "b-sides" mini-disc collection, walking round Sheffield towards the end of 1999, and that part of the song made me want to fling wide my arms and holler at the sky. Knowing my intent, at the time, to become less reserved, it's just possible that I did that once. But more likely that I just quickened my pace for a few seconds. And those lines felt even more appropriate to my situation than I Defeat. Of course, she didn't, and I still had to, but earlier in the year we had done.
There's one more line that maybe doesn't quite work, but which I enjoy nevertheless: "No one gives their lives up for the highs of the cerebral." Something there about the sexuality of the intellect, or, put another way, blue-stocking totty.
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