Boo Boo Boy

Just published by Spenwood Books, All the Songs Sound the Same is an anthology of over 300 essays by fans of The Wedding Present, each one describing their favourite number by the band. I'm in there and the piece I penned is about Boo Boo -: 

The first time I heard Boo Boo, my immediate response was to jump up and down on the spot, punching the air and roaring my incoherent approval. I was in my living room, one Friday teatime at the end of May 2008, having just purchased El Rey. Almost a decade and a half later, it remains my favourite latter period Wedding Present album and Boo Boo my all time favourite song of theirs.

To these ears, Boo Boo is a musical tour de force, combining a profound, dispassionate yet ominous, growling wall of slow noise with quieter passages of precise, intense solo guitar manipulation, displaying forensic control and creating an atmosphere combining hope, despair and ambivalence. The achingly brief lyrics create the two most visual and affecting images in all of David Gedge’s writing. DLG himself has gone on record as saying he feels the opening line Well yes, it’s late; the waiter’s stacking the chairs has a highly cinematic quality. I disagree, as my mind visualises an oil painting, composed predominantly in matt black, nocturnal blues and turgid yellow, creating a scene that incorporates a window table for two in an otherwise deserted restaurant, on a quiet side street in a sleeping, obscure town on an unremarkable midweek night. The lateness of the hour suggests this assignation may have connotations of a clandestine meeting, rather than a friendly catch up over a bite of supper. However, there hints that one of those has emotionally moved on. It isn’t him though.

The fact the lyrics are in the present tense increases the sense of immediacy and unpredictability surrounding the situation we are drawn into. There’s no scope for reflection or analysis of times gone by; we know the two diners have a shared romantic history and the aching sense of yearning from the spurned narrator is genuinely heart-rending. Is his former lover now simply his friend or is there a chance that the passion could be rekindled? When the second verse begins by describing how Your eyes are glistening as you fill my glass to the brim even the most disaffected, pessimistic ex must tend towards believing she still carries a torch, only to be struck down by how she makes her new flame the main subject of the conversation. Those optical lagoons of perfect blue drain and desiccate; barren and loveless. Has the hope of a moment before really been extinguished?

The real lyrical genius of Boo Boo is that the song leaves the future ambiguous.  There are no more verses. We don’t learn if the night ended with wild, unbridled passion, a rancorous outpouring of bad blood, or a chaste peck on the cheek. The music offers no clues either; a vast, anthemic, crescendo of pummelling volume builds and builds and… dissipates… Again, we are in the throes of ambiguity; there isn’t a climax, only bathos. Interpret the complementary sounds and words how you wish; all that is certain is the lack of finality, which leaves us yearning for more, even as the quite baffling Swingers is bringing El Rey to a gloriously confusing close.