So, “Don’t Blind Me With Science” - another two track single from Paul Hawkins & Thee Awkward Silences. I’m actually slightly nervous before I listen to it, because I’m kind of scared that whatever they do next will shatter the edifice of artifice I’ve decided informs what they do. It’s like Schrödinger’s cat – until I collapse the waveform of probability by opening the box, I do not know whether or not the cat is alive. Or, in this case, whether the cat was ever there in the first place.
But I digress, useful metaphor or otherwise. “Don’t Blind Me From Science” has all the promise of off-kilter oddness right from the get-go, with a freaky multi-voiced cacophony before Thee Awkward Silences launch into the droning keyboards and four-square drumming of the song itself. Paul Hawkins sings a lament to the frailty of human biology in the face of loneliness and lust which is made all the more odd by his uniquely flat and monotonous delivery, sounding like some stem-cell chimaera of Johnny Rotten and the John Major puppet from Spitting Image.
The lyrics of “Don’t Blind Me With Science” are a mix of dead-pan geek misery and surrealist stand-up. Whether Hawkins really believes romance is dead and love is a myth, I have no idea, but I’d not put it past him to spend a long time crafting his songs so as to leave people of each and every philosophical bent slightly disturbed, with a vague awareness that their fundamental beliefs have just been dismissed, questioned, or groped without warning.
The flip-side is one of the bleakest songs I’ve ever heard; “Gentleman on Crutches” is a monologue by a disabled old man who throws himself down the stairs in the hope of getting taken to hospital and receiving from the nurses the basic human attention that is completely absent from his day to day life. It’s underpinned by simple root-note synth piano and cheap disco drum-machine sounds, and sounds even more like a discarded Half Man Half Biscuit track or a sketch from a headline-grabbing shock-comedy series than “Don’t Blind Me With Science”.
And still, I am left uncertain. Is Paul Hawkins mocking the world, or himself, or me the listener? Or all three at once? Or is his work a commentary on music itself, a deconstruction of the role of narrative in a world where songs about murder are commonplace but songs about self-harming octogenarians feel somehow uncomfortable to listen to? Did he find Thee Awkward Silences, or did they find him? Why is a raven like a writing desk?
Hell, I don’t even know if I like “Don’t Blind Me With Science”. It’s not the sort of thing you sing along to - or even put on while doing the housework - but there’s something naggingly insistent about it. One thing’s for certain, it’s not music that you can ignore without a great deal of effort; Paul Hawkins captures your attention, and in an era of identikit cultural clones, that alone has to be worth something. I just wish I knew whether I should wash my hands after each listen.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: anti-folk, Don't Blind Me With Science, garage, Paul Hawkins, pop, post-punk, Thee Awkward Silences, weird
