Day 58: Also Sprach Zarathrustra

Here's a dance-influenced one from the 90s, love it.



Song: Free Range
Album: Code: Selfish
Year: 1992

Apparently this was the only self-penned top 40 hit for the band, but who gives a flying shit about charts? I realised what a con they were back when I was a cynical ten-year-old, I still can't believe they count down the top 40 every week on the radio still, weird. Anyway, enough about my hate for popularity charts, this song is great.

It has that driving tinny-yet-defiant drum sound that came with a lot of dance music at that time, something my dad terms 'tick tick' music, but obviously has The Fall written all over it. It has a dreamy quality about it, like a post-club euphoria to it, the lyrics however I'd say are as opinionated and unusual as ever.

To me its a song about paranoia and avoiding peer pressure, the lines 'it pays to talk to no-one' and 'pressure guilt' back this up. In simple terms, it could simply be a bizarre rant against free range farming, putting pressure on people to buy free range products out of guilt? By now, on day 58, I would not put anything past MES, so who knows?

Love these lines: 'This is the spring without end/This is the summer of malcontent/This is the winter of your mind' not only paraphrasing Shakespeare, but slipping in quite venomous lines to what is quite a chirpy song, but we've seen that before haven't we Fall fans?



Had to include this, the only Fall video featuring a whistful and windswept MES in a jeep!

Can somebody send me some more requests? I keep making my way to familiar albums, help! Oh and also, Shift Work is copyrighted on youtube, is there a way to bypass this? Seems a shame to not be able to include it in this mental experiment.