As entertaining as the pictorial Reader’s Wives!
After an hour of changing the radio station, and flicking through the music channels on my television for something that might musically excitement me, I give up to go and overdose on caffeine and sugar for a false high that might take me up to the similar highs that a decent tune might have taken me. It is at that point that I slip in the disc of Ireland’s alternative rock band, Reader’s Wives, and I can say that for the next hour my world was never the same again…
I’m suddenly transferred into a world that is a little like a hybrid of fairytales and dreamscapes, and as I look down I appear to be dressed as Alice on my way to Wonderland, but instead of being wholesome and pure, I feel like a hooker after her forth fat ugly business man, and I am wandering around slightly dazed as I concede to the fact that this is my home as the first tune, ‘Home Sweet Home’ rings out like a show opener - a little Alice Cooper from the ‘70’s with a dark, twisted veil masquerading as a gentle number. The sound of a baby crying faintly in the background is eerie, to say the least, but dare I say comforting too…
Running past a large looking glass, I look at my skinny and pale baggy skin, covering bones that want to escape to a body more deserving, and the song, ‘Advertising Heroin’ plays out with lyrics that poetically explain what I see in front of me, “Retching over a filthy cistern // too thin to even bear a child // like her dead sister // live in porno // where paper’s advertise her heroin // swallowing a sex toy // the only thing to pass her lips since 1995 // when one died and the other OD’d…” it is then perhaps that after the needle has scratched my skin and ejaculated it’s liquid into me, that I float off to a world that shines brightly and I am now tanned and healthy drinking the liquid of the next song, ‘Cavan Cola’ - a drink that was available in Ireland from 1984 before being controversially being withdrawn in 2001. But I forget this as the almost reggae beat of the song flushes over me, and for very different reason I now forget my own name…ahhh!
Now acutely aware of my new attractive self, I can’t but feel suddenly blessed and although some may question Niall James Holohan’s lyrical feeling, in his song, ‘Sexually Attracted To Myself’, I find I too feel at one with myself, again. It’s gentle guitar strum glides like searching fingers over my body, but I am suddenly embarrassed as I see the intruding eyes of someone and realise how Little Bo Peep got her name…Dressed again, I set off on a mission, almost colliding with a rabbit in a top hat staring at his mobile phone and muttering that he’s late into his hand’s free, and I’m hoping that I’ll not a meet a smarmy cat with grin like a North West county when the fuzzbox guitar riffs blast out to a song that makes me smile called, ‘The Cat’s In The Bag & The Bag’s In The River’, which has a rock blues feel with guitars tinkling in the background.
I almost get knocked down by a tortoise that trundles by, and I realise that the rabbit before was in fact the hare that should be here running in this Olympic qualifier that the tortoise is sure to win now…A piano beat and humming melody rings out for the song, ‘Nowhere To Run, Nowhere To Hide’, but I disagree and jump down a hole, slipping me down into a world of bright colours and my favourite characters from Sesame Street, dancing around to a Ska beat in the funky party atmospherics of, ‘One Two’. On the walls are plasma screens showing pinball machines, and I’m engulfed by my youth as I recognise the number count of 1-12 from the aforementioned show is actually part of this song, or rather the other way around…
As I turn down a long corridor the lights go dim and thick blue cigar smoke dances around above me as the sudden surprise of female vocals jump in with the song, ‘Are You Coming For A Drink After Work, Princess?’. The song actually turns into a duet sounding like a cross between The Crocketts and The Crimea, and it’s possibly the comparisons between Niall vocals and Davey MacManus’ vocals that makes me feel so welcome in a place that others may find lonely and slightly strange. Like a warm but threadbare comfortable blanket the music wraps around me nudging me forward with the confidence of experience and a hint of foolhardiness.
A bright light around the corner gives off the silhouette of something that looks like a wolf, and though I’m neither Little Red Riding Hood, nor either of The Three Little Pigs, a wolf is never a friendly creature in these worlds, so I thrust through some swinging doors of a saloon that has seen better days, but a honky-tonk-band are laughing and playing a song, ‘The Pot’s Still Boiling On The Stove’, and it’s catchy folk beats and simple chorus have the crowd dancing around like they are drunk on free moonshine, and I find myself giggling and joining in with a guy called Jack who tries more than once to thrust his beans into my hands…
I am suddenly aware that if I don’t keep moving it will soon be midnight and there is a chance that I may turn into a pumpkin, so I slip out of a fire exit and leave the laughing behind me. The slow melancholy of coming down sweeps over me as the first lines of ‘Have You Seen The Moon Tonight’ ring out. “She’s falling out of love with me,” it starts off, and the world around me begins to quiver and the sun begins to fall down in sympathy for my feelings. A travelling medicine man jumps out looking somewhat like an undertaker, which is slightly ironic, and points at me whilst singing a song called, ‘I Don’t Need To Be Seduced’ which has a background static of a gramophone, as he waves his cane, and spins his battered top hat for an affect that I don’t fully appreciate.
With dancing tinkles of what could be bones on a jam jar, the last tune ‘Victor’s Mother Juliet’ plays out as I feel myself led with my eyes clasped shut unwilling to open to the horrors of the world. Thick with feelings pushing down on me, the band Readers Wives have taken me through a journey through my mind, with a rawness and a sense of boundless energy they have once again awoken my whole being to the world of music.
As I turn off my CD, and walk down to my bedroom I am feeling refreshed and positively alright with the world but then I see my bed, and I wonder, “Who’s been sleeping in my bed?” But of course, folks I know, as they are still there…