The search for the accidentally obscure on vinyl is a never ending one. I had no idea who David Warren is but his single, “The Knife”, was pressed on a particularly unpleasant colour of vinyl. Who could reasonably resist that?
As it turns out, this - quite weighty- single contains three poems. Not Wordsworth wandering lonely as a cloud type poems but more paeans to ordinariness and the discomfiture of the misfit. “The Knife”, just to kick things off, tells the tale - or should that be tail – of an amateur rat catcher dealing obsessionally with the consequences of the entrapment and destruction of a pesky rodent. It sounds odd and, with a presumably synthetic harmonium boosting the downbeat feel, let’s be honest it is. You would worry if you were in the company of someone who told you such a story.
More reflections on the decay implicit with ordinariness can be found in “A Kind Of Tribute” as David Warren reflects, in an obsessive compulsive kind of way, on the defects of his significant other whilst admitting her magnetic attraction. That said, I think I know the woman in question.
Finishing things off is “Lazy No More”. So downbeat it could be the lyrics to a song by Morrissey, this short little poem (and we are definitely talking poetry here) spins over the futility found in depression. We are talking bleak and we are talking compact here and we are talking affecting. It’s a sign of the times.
Bleeding Gold Records have done a nice job here with the lo-fi sound presented as best as it can be (mastered by Pirates Press, it would seem). God knows what possessed them to press it on phlegm coloured vinyl though.
Available from Bandcamp.