I never watched The Tube much in its heyday — or before/after its heyday for that matter. Mostly, I think, because I was at university without a TV, and, come the holidays, I just didn't have the habit. I never read The Face, either. Maybe once. I was young — in my prime, you might say — but my finger was so far from the pulse.
I saw this episode of The Tube, however:
And I think I went out soon after that and bought the record. It's a gatefold sleeve, which was rare for the pre-indie indie music. Hatful of Hollow is the only other one I can think of. It wasn't the sleeve that did it for me, however. It was the subject matter and the unusual lexicon of the lyrics. And I don't just mean "tuppentup"" or "Stella Mater", but "Lordy", too — that's not a word you heard very often in English pop songs in 1984. It was like they were an off-centre Haircut 100, in the days before I could fully admit to myself that I enjoyed Haircut 100 even when they were straight-down-the-middle.
As for what the lyrics said,
Should a love be tender, and bleed out loud?
Or be tougher than tough, and prouder than proud?
If I'm troubled by, every folding of your skirt,
Am I guilty of every male-inflicted hurt?
But I don't know how to describe the modern rose
When I can't refer to the shape against her clothes
With the fever of purple prose.
I had a quick skim of my journal from 1984 to see if I'd quoted those words there. If I did, I couldn't find them, but I'm positive I cited them during one of those earnest debates about how we were going to build an anti-sexist society. There's another thing we never quite got round to. I blame Prefab Sprout for complicating the issue.
Listening with the benefit of hindsight, Swoon sounds like a slightly rough-edged precursor to the Marxism Today pop that characterised the rest of Prefab Sprout's catalogue. At the time, we had none of that context, and the album was more its own boss. It had sweetness, but it wasn't drenched in it. Paddy's voice had touch of rasp and roughness that still gives this record a different character to all the rest.
It remains one of my favourites, and still reminds me very much of Easter 1984, the same time as I bought Mister Heartbreak.
MusicBrainz entry for this album
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