They say that just because you lose the vote, doesn’t mean that you have to stop making the argument. So even though the country that Paul Cavanagh and Dave Jackson call home has recently swung politically to the right, and done so in no uncertain terms, that doesn’t stop them commenting on the situation. But Charmed is politics with a small p, a comment not so much on the new policies sweeping across the land but rather on those who make them. The Charmed of the title. Those wealthy, well-schooled, privileged few who live in a bubble of luxury and who play at politics, juggle the concerns of the citizens, make life changing, and sometimes life ending, decisions as if it were a game of chess. And when they decide to stop playing dice with the electorates lives they receive a golden handshake and retire to the lucrative after dinner speaking circuit.
Musically The Room in the Wood continues to do fascinating things, this time bathing their harsh lyrical pictures in lullaby infused, baroque, sixties pop. A song that Burt Bacharach himself would have been proud to have written.
There is something about the Liverpool psyche which seems to work along very different lines than most other musical melting pots. From The Beatles to The Bunnymen to The Coral it seems to be a city which has never been one of the tribalism and scenes that most others gather around them. Charmed’s lilting, lulling textures seem both wonderfully out of kilter with fad or fashion and brilliantly in line with the outside the box thinking that comes from the place they call home. The timing is also impeccable.
[…] more than anything Fun of the Fair is unashamedly pop. You can dress things up in all the cool trappings, seminal references and hip […]