"Heard Lambchop's Up With People advertising something on the BBC" says the awesome Superman Revenge Squad on his uncharacteristically cheery This Is A Happy Song. And he's on to something, because there's little that's as upliftiting as the first minute or so of Up With People, from the gentle whoosh and chatter amongst the band as it opens right up to the whoop of joy someone lets out before Kurt Wagner's vocals start; truly, to listen to the first minute or so of Up With People is to be reassured for a few precious moments that everything is going to be all right somehow.
Obviously, songwriters being contrary buggers, This Is A Happy Song quickly turns to the author's conviction that his happy song is no good ("if it's the worst song on the album I don't care") and the most prominent lyric of Up With People is about how "we are screwing up our lives today". Now, usually my near-total inability to decipher what lyrics might be about is usually rather frustrating, but in this case I'm pretty sure that I'm at an advantage: if I could work out what "a kind of welfare state of the soul" might be it could in some way diminish the loveliness of what surrounds it. Better to live in ignorance and swoon as the horns kick in and the song climaxes in a welter of over the top "oooh"ing. Yes.
Matt Sullivan
[Spotify]
[YouTube]
[Album: Nixon]
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