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She can’t say, they can’t see/ Putting it down to another bad day
Inspiral Carpets – This Is How It Feels
The facts:
Year: 1990.
Genre: Madchester.
Country: United Kingdom.
From the album: Life.
Acclaimed Music ranking: #2876.
Song ranking on Acclaimed Music in the artist’s discography: 1st (the only one).
Ranks higher than Lost Someone by James Brown, but lower than Kelly Watch the Stars by Air.
Place in the Acclaimed Music Song Poll 2015: unranked.
The people:
Written by Clint Boon.
Produced by Inspiral Carpets & Nick Garside.
Lead vocals by Tom Hingley.
Background vocals by Clint Boon.
Guitar by Graham Lambert.
Drums by Craig Hill.
Bass by Martyn Walsh.
Keyboard by Clint Bon.
The opinion:
This one goes out to all the British people out there, because this week we are covering a song from the Madchester movement. The music from this period changed the history of music according to some people (read: the British music press), while the rest of the world (read: really the rest of the world) didn’t care at all. Chances are: if you are not from Britain and grew up around the late 80’s or early 90’s you probably don’t know Inspiral Carpets.
They were quite big in Britain for a year of two or three. Though they lacked that one big hit they charted with quite a few songs there. Although This Is How It Feels was not their highest charting single (that would be Dragging Me Down), it is their most fondly remembered one. Despite the hits and critical acclaim their names never became as well-known abroad as Happy Mondays or The Stone Roses (and well-known is really a relative term here) or quite as synonymous with the Madchester movement as these founding bands. That they don’t have any other song or any album at all ranking on Acclaimed Music perhaps speaks volumes.
I’m being a bit sardonic about all this, mainly because scenes in music tend to be a bit overhyped. Though perhaps if you were from Manchester in that period of time the music of Inspiral Carpets and their contemporaries were really something else. What matters now mostly is how the music holds up. Actually, the parent album of This Is How It Feels, titles Life, is pretty good and I’m surprised it has no mention on AM. It is perhaps no real masterpiece, but it is a well-played album that’s free of filler and has some great rock tunes. It is not hard to see how Inspiral Carpets made a name for themselves. I added a few tracks from the album to the playlist below.
Having said that, I’m not sure I would have picked This Is How It Feels as the stand-out track. It’s a good song, but just lacks something to be truly memorable. There are two things that draw attention: the bleak lyrics and the organ (actually a keyboard, but everyone still calls it an organ, so there). That sounds like a great combination, doesn’t it? The problem might very well be that they don’t really combine.
About those lyrics, it is all about loneliness. You can compare it somewhat with Ralph McTell’s Streets of London in that way, with various sketches of lonely lives. The first part tells of a neglected, maybe abused mother that can’t show her feelings. These lines are actually quite stirring. In a few sentences the band paints a picture of a hollow, desperate existence. After the first chorus we get a verse about a rich man that killed himself. This verse is less good. It’s a bit weird to say that you know how it feels to be lonely based on a news report of someone who killed himself. It’s even weirder to keep the line “This is how it feels if your word means nothing at all” intact, because how likely is that the problem of an apparently powerful man? These part of the lyrics lack the poetic power of the first verse, or of the more detailed portrait of the similarly themed Richard Corey by Simon & Garfunkel, who use an outsider position in an interesting way (see the playlist).
What this all lacks is despair in the musical department. Tom Hingley sings fine in a distinctly British way, but he doesn’t sound particularly shaken by what happens to his subjects. Neither do the musicians. They craft a memorable tune, but it sounds more pleasant than anything else. There isn’t much emotion in it, as if the band had a certain distance to the material. Don’t expect the organ to be used in a similar way as The Animals did in House of the Rising Sun, which added a haunting part to the song. The organ is still the most notable instrument on This Is How It Feels, but is very pleasing to the ears. Clint Boon plays it beautifully, but it doesn’t elevate the material all that much. Perhaps if the song would have sounded as bleak as the lyrics it couldn’t have been a hit. The band wasn’t against compromising for the charts. The lines about the body of the rich man being found under a train were replaced for single release with a more oblique line about him leaving a note for a local girl. That version I put at the end of the playlist for reference.
I don’t know how well-known this band is among the members of Acclaimed Music, but I think this is a meagre introduction. Don’t get me wrong, I like the song, but I won’t be returning much to it, I suspect. These guys have better material.
6/10
Other versions:
I found only two covers of this song. The first is by Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine (how is that for an artist name!). It came rather soon after the original. Carter made it into a driving hard rock song. It’s no masterpiece, but it can hold its own next to the version by the Inspiral Carpets. Less successful to me is the wacky variation by Nigel of Bermondsey. I’m not sure I understand his intentions, but his musical approach sounds too goofy for the lyrics. Here is waiting until a band like, say, The National covers the song
The Playlist:
