Quirk Your Enthusiasm (10)

By: Jonathan Lethem
August 10, 2016

One of 25 installments in a series of posts analyzing and celebrating a few of our favorite New Wave songs from c. 1977–1982. Josh Glenn’s series introduction is here, and you can listen to the QUIRK YOUR ENTHUSIASM playlist here. Enjoy!

“I LOVE THIS LIFE” | THE BLUE NILE | 1981

The song stumbles in, as if you’ve turned a corner to approach something less a party or a gig than a rehearsal, or audition, likely a failed one. The tone mingles default new wave synth-bop with gawky art-school guitar jerks and bass grumbles of the Gang of Four or Slits variety, yet all of it seeming drugged with a lethal dose of anomie and unambition, the singer’s weary, crushed romanticism reaching for Bryan Ferry and tumbling down some back stairwell instead, to John Cale. “The sun is up on all our old goodbyes…” What a strange way to say hello, this phantom self-released single from 1981 by a band that wouldn’t manage an album for another three years and seemed to be writing its own obituary from the start. “I can’t go on… am I already out of style?… tell everybody it’s all right…” The players seem willing to let the machines make the music for them, and to jangle in obedience to a future that’s left them clearly behind — yet this attitude of Zen capitulation has infected the machines themselves, which mourn and mope and stutter and giggle in celebration of some vast, embracing defeat, one yet to be completely enacted, but sensed in every line. “…drifting in from some other town… the laughing girls who can’t go on…” These art-school boys and their music machines decided to preempt life’s disappointments by embracing every finale, and so freed themselves to plummet and dance through the veil of their remaining days, which just happened to be their whole lives. It’s Brian Wilson’s “The Warmth of the Sun” or The Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset”, except you can’t even see the sun or the sunset, only yourself, probably not inside the club, but dancing with your friends outside, with the bouncer glaring, “dancing and singing, caring and careless…”

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QUIRK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Mark Kingwell on Soft Cell’s TAINTED LOVE | Joanne McNeil on Gary Numan’s METAL | Devin McKinney on Suicide’s FRANKIE TEARDROP | Douglas Wolk on Family Fodder’s SAVOIR FAIRE | Elina Shatkin on Marianne Faithfull’s BROKEN ENGLISH | Steph Burt on Altered Images’ HAPPY BIRTHDAY | Greg Rowland on Jilted John’s JILTED JOHN | Gordon Dahlquist on XTC’s RESPECTABLE STREET | Adrienne Crew on D-Day’s TOO YOUNG TO DATE | Jonathan Lethem on The Blue Nile’s I LOVE THIS LIFE | Josh Glenn on Tim Curry’s I DO THE ROCK | Molly Wright Steenson on Missing Persons’ WORDS | Anthony Miller on The Nails’ 88 LINES ABOUT 44 WOMEN | Luc Sante on The Normal’s WARM LEATHERETTE | Mimi Lipson on Dolly Mixture’s HOW COME YOU’RE SUCH A HIT WITH THE BOYS, JANE? | Tim Carmody on Talking Heads’ LIFE DURING WARTIME | Ingrid Schorr on Ian Dury’s CLEVOR TREVER | Adam McGovern on Lene Lovich’s LUCKY NUMBER | Deb Chachra on Rough Trade’s HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL | Tor Aarestad on Oingo Boingo’s LITTLE GIRLS | David Smay on The B-52’s’ DANCE THIS MESS AROUND | Jessamyn West on Blondie’s HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE | Drew Daniel on The Human League’s MARIANNE | Erik Davis on Tuxedomoon’s TIME TO LOSE | Dan Fox on Thomas Dolby’s EUROPA & THE PIRATE TWINS.

MORE ENTHUSIASM SERIES at HILOBROW

Quirk Your Enthusiasm (10)

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