This is one of the strangest performances I've heard by Mr Smith.
Song: Anecdotes+Antidotes In B#
Album: The Marshall Suite
Year: 1999
Mark sounds absolutely smashed on this, slurring words, out of time and you can hear him smacking his lips together and other glottal noises as he delivers some pretty obtuse lines over and over. I did enjoy this one, but I always feel like it's the aural equivalent of rubbernecking when you hear someone having trouble with a song. It works, weirdly, the lyrics are actually pretty good and the feel of his delivery sounds frustrated and anxious. The lines about walking down a train carriage and no smoking being allowed is something you can imagine him doing. I'm imagining a sozzled Smith falling down a narrow train corridor, trying to find an opening to have a crafty cig out of, but getting more and more sweaty and frustrated when he can't find one.
I still can't shake the feeling this was recorded in a hurry, I know around this time he was having problems with lineups, but equally, this album has the amazing Touch Sensitive on it, so maybe this was a mis-step, or maybe I'm being totally stupid and it was all part of the Marshall theme that he said the album was, the life of a character, maybe in this particular instance, Marshall was inebriated and in need of a glass of water, what other explanation could there be?
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