Misty’s Big Adventure were the decade’s great might-have-beens who never really seemed to fulfill their commercial potential (a thing I suspect they scoffed at the idea of just as much as they secretly dreamed about it). They may have done themselves no favours in this respect with their most well-known single Fashion Parade, which chose to quite hilariously mock the landfill indie scenesters who cluttered up the Top 10 in the middle of the decade. By continually yelling out about how odd, outsiderish and eccentric they were compared to their peers, they may have caused people to close their ears to how well they knew their way around a classic song as well.
Serious Thing is a prime example of this. Beginning as a gently strummed, mumbling little ballad about a relationship’s demise, it builds into a momentous, epic thing of wonder, filled to the brim with old-school easy listening harmonies, a wonderfully pounding instrumental break, and one of the most plain and simple but strangely effective lyrical phrases the band have ever produced: “Everyone says it’s a serious thing... and you’d be surprised at the pain it can bring”.
Serious Thing ends as it begins, with a whimper rather than a bang, and feels like something The Magnetic Fields would have written if they were actually a quarter as good as some of you chaps seem to believe they are. There’s nothing half-arsed, lo-fi, cultish or indie about this noise – it’s big, bold and thoughtful, and deserved to be heard by many more people.
Dave Bryant
[Spotify]
[YouTube]
[Album: Funny Times]
2 comments:
Good choice. i really couldn't decide what song by Mistys i would have chosen, though. If it was something off Funny Times then maybe How Did You Manage To Get Inside My Head or The Long Conveyor Belt...or We Do or Home Made War...see it's difficult!
It is a dilemma. I nearly ran with "Fashion Parade" just for its topicality and the way it summed up a portion of the decade so effectively, but then it's a long chalk from being their actual best "song", and has probably been over-discussed already.
I've never warmed to "How Did You Manage To Get Inside My Head" as much as other fans have - I find something a tiny bit Rod Hull's Pink Windmill about some parts of the arrangement, although I accept that this could be my issue alone. But I could have gone for "Mulling it Over", "Remind Me A Song", "Story of Love", "Between Me And You", and the list goes on and on... they've made some of the best low budget videos of the decade as well.
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