Monday 24 August 2015

Powerpop - The Photographs

I know nothing about the Photographs' 1979 single 'Second Best', except that I bought it in a job lot at the Our Price shop round the back of Finchley Road tube station the year after it came out. Ironically, given their name, it didn't even come in a picture sleeve, so I have no idea what they looked like. They were a Bristol band, who - as far as I'm aware - never released anything else, and the Do Not Bend label was presumably their own, since it also never released anything else.

The production is sketchy, to say the least, the female vocals are flat, both in tuning and attitude, and the chord sequence is hardly a revelation. Despite all of which, I think it's lovely, a proper pop song that's all the better for being flawed. It's like the Chiffons would've sounded if there'd only been one of them, and she'd grown up on a 1970s council estate, before becoming the first in her family to go to university.

No comments:

Post a Comment