by camphorvan on Tue Aug 21, 2007 10:30 am
I don't have a live version of Despair - can barely bring myself to listen to the studio version. I may be of a minority here, but I think it one of the weakest songs in the Japan cannon, whilst tracks like Fall In Love With Me, Halloween, Alien, The Other Side of Life and In Vogue some of the strongest. I think there is an honesty, free of pretension, in the arrangements you don't really get later on and I think the lyrics are some of the strongest too; very impressionistic and summoning up this sense of being quite lost without labouring the point. Plus, it has guitars. Guitars are always good. I've been listening to those songs really closely lately and I really think they still stand up to scrutiny. Plus they really seem to fit the unbelievably miserable, dreary, grey summer we're experiencing in the UK at the moment.
Ho hum.