The comparatively harmless swan song of Bring Back the Good Ol' Boys by Tom Minor comes on like a winking smirk over a broken heart, the kind of expression you make when you are watching history reenact its most inhuman vignettes whilst your heart is clamped in irons with an equal amount of irony and pain. It is a melody that walks the thin line of musical joy, its light facade veiling the acidic tang of disenchantment with democracy-it is like observing your favourite pub slowly fall apart, as everyone inside it tries to ignore the cracks that are gradually splitting up the roof. As this song progresses, it roused that depressing sensation that you feel as whole countries slide off to the same cliff they have fallen off of previously like having lost the silver teapot of your grandmother turning to green with age and disinterestedness.
Tom Minor, a ferment of sounds, his stomping grounds being North London, is a mixture of indie rock, with its rough edge, new wave, with its cunning beat, punk, with its rebellious growl, all mixed up in his own unique flavour of existential indie. After years of creating hits on behalf of others, he has finally taken a possession of his own territory, surfing on the adulations of his first record followed by these razor-sharp singles that provide you with half-complete conversations. Under Teaboy Palmer as the producer--that enigmatic maker that they term the Shadow Morton of Muswell Hill--the song is full of life and at the same time probes your soul as we hold on to rose-coloured memories as the world breaks down beneath us, just like holding on to the life raft of a ship-owner, but at the same time storms overhead.
I find most resonant in how it combines light and sorrow and creates a philosophical tempest, a sense that is deeply personal, as though Tom is making you look through a mirror at what you are as uneasy about. That is beyond just writing a song, it is a delicate kick in the heavier part of the conscience, a recognition of our collective weakness, a strong and a hurt emotion at once, as though you just stepped out of a very intense argument with a new sense of clarity but a sore bruise on the heart. In a time which is decided to reverse its mistakes, this song is a light-house--vibrating with life and full of content.
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