The House Of A Thousand Bleeding Hearts
Good job Stephen Fretwell's ex wasn't called Beryl or something as I doubt it would have carried the same gravitas and weight as the nice middle class Emily. Is it only girls with cool or sweet names that get ballads written about them, as there seems to be a distinct lack of appearances of the Sharon's, Betty's ,Fannie's and the like in the introspective musings of pop's broken hearted torch singers.
On this record Fretwell well and truly takes his place on the banks of the stream of tears along with the thousand other moping singer-songwriters expelling their lachrymal emissions for you to dive head long into. He also sounds mighty pissed off at Emily stringing him along with her cold calculated machinations, infidelity and calls at all hours to use him as an emotional crutch. She really does sound like a harlot and certainly not someone you'd want to immortalize in a song.
I think I prefer Jah Wobble's more earthy approach to broken relationships with his stonkingly good 'Betrayal' which has Mr Wobble repeating the word 'betrayal' only to stop interminably to spit out the word 'bitch' over a bass line that could unblock constipation at 100 yards. Fretwell -could there possibly be a better name - seems to have crawled under his bed with a silk hankie to weep salty tears into a frilly bucket. And maybe that's half the problem, he should have nipped it in the bud early on and learnt to say no to Emily and then he could have concentrated on emulating The Stooges' 'I Wanna Be Your Dog'. Room Thirteen agony column coming soon!