Jack -
"...of Lights"

Phespirit first discovered Jack through their incarnation as Jacques: an intimate and quirky collaboration project with Momus. Their credibility was enhanced - in Phespirit's eyes - on releasing their debut album "Pioneer Soundtracks" on the wonderful Too Pure label. And this, the epic opening track, is pure icing.

"...of Lights" is the melodramatic anthem of London played in dark, not-for-children, comic book style. It is massively over-dramatised and romanticised, shifting and crackling, at once crepuscular and colourful in a slate grey landscape. Everything flickering in splendid isolation.

It is a bloody and beautiful tableau.

It is bloody beautiful music.

Lyrics

Dirty is in her lover's arms and it is London in the morning
Behind them the skyline burning, the riots meaning nothing
Behind in the rent and ahead in evolution
On this, the eve of the revolution

"What if we killed our clothes and learned to fall without landing?"

In a café over coffee he remembers Rachael
And how her wrists were like china
While in some warehouse off the river
A daughter is raped to Canon in D Minor

"And just supposing, just imagine - what if the world wasn't ending?"

Do do do do do
Do do do do do
Do do do do do
Do do do do do

And see there beneath the moon
The widowed moll moves
Through the gangsters' bars
As a jaguar through an orchestra
And the orchestra is out of tune
And the band is out of time

"All this horror, perversion - what if the world wasn't ending?"

Do do do do do
Do do do do do
Do do do do do
Do d-do do do

Do do do do do
Do do do do do
Do do do do do
Do d-do dooo...

"What if the world wasn't ending?"

And in every Friday night high street
Drink 'til you're sick and eat 'til you're full
"'cause Honey, Baby, Sugar... it's a fallen world"

...ugly children
These are beautiful stories for ugly children   (these are beautiful stories for ugly children)
These are beautiful stories for ugly children
These are beautiful stories for ugly children

"And I couldn't wait for each song to end so that the next would begin"
"the day Harold Wilson died I cried and cried for hours"
It was a pisser and that's no mistake
"And as Joe lay dying kids across the hall were playing - somewhere there was a party goin' on..."

"The landlord was a vampire"
"I was trapped in the vastness of my dreams"
"What if the world wasn't ending?"
"And as Joe lay dying kids across the hall were playing"
.....