Round 2-3: Catch/ Want / The Walk

[Birds in Hell]

Round 2-3:

Catch (Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, 1987)
Want (Wild Mood Swings, 1996)
The Walk (Japanese Whispers, 1983)

[Birds in Hell]

I kissed you in the water
And made your dry lips sing
I saw you look like a Japanese baby
In an instant, I remembered everything

The Walk.

[Higgs]

The Walk is great, but it ain't Want.

[Anders]

Want it is.

[Jorge]

But following 'The Kiss' with 'Catch' is almost the perfect definition of a 180 turn, and again, if the idea was to project confidence in the band doing whatever the heck it wanted to, the group nailed it. Unsurprisingly a single, one of the album’s four, and less than half as short as 'The Kiss' was, 'Catch' seemingly exists as a perfect fillip, light and breezy sounding, Smith in regret and reflection mode rather than rage. Williams’s drumming, his skilled and just-so intros now a firm part of what the band could do, kicks it off and sets a gentle tone, and from there it’s also sweet sorrow in the gentle sway of the singing, the bursts of acoustic guitar here and there, the violin keyboard part. Tim Pope’s video for the song so excellently captures the feeling of the song, the idea of something delicate and sun-kissed playing while wandering the Mediterranean coast of France.



There’s also an elegant, if potentially twisted, trick in that the song’s about someone in the narrator’s past, but is also directed about someone new and present, the type of thing where the song is so instantly captivating that the impact of the opening line - “Yeah I know who you remind me of” - can slip by if you’re not careful. In the same way as The Head On The Door’s 'A Night Like This' almost implies, there’s almost the hint of the unreliable narrator here, or that there’s an incomplete story told where there are three figures involved but only one is heard from directly. It’s not something unique to Smith of course, but it’s also a sign of a just careful enough lyricist, able to move beyond strict personal/autobiographical depictions or I/you interactions to consider something a little more complicated, perhaps a touch more ‘real’ if you like.

[evenslow]

let's have a catch

[LetMeSleep]

Want.

[chewm]

Catch by far, what a gorgeous song.