There’s something about a song that comes in pieces like this, a song that doesn’t quite gel (until it does). It’s at once too camp and not camp enough, teetering on the edge of some larger sophistication but not quite sure why. And then the hooks, and it doesn’t matter.
Wouldn’t have touched this with a ten-foot pole a decade ago, but here we are. Thank you, London.
“Rip It Up” still feels as casually, toe-tappingly anthemic as it must have done in 1983. Open a window. Rip it up, and start again.
And I hope to God I’m not as numb as you make out
I’ve spent the last five years slowly realizing that most of what I’ve found fresh and exciting in music was done better in the 80s.
“Polaroid/Roman/Photo” is a track by French new wave band Ruth. Sitting near the end of a minimal synth compilation I stumbled on a couple weeks back, it singlehandedly prefigures everything I liked around 2001–2006. At the time, I was in the throes of Ladytron (synths! sex!), Stereo Total (style! boy/girl vocals!), The Notwist (beats! horns! guitars!) — and they fronted my iPod 1G soundtrack as I left the arctic in a predictably naive search for imaginary jetset euro-cosmopolitan futures.
The song triggers every impulse that brought me to London. But it sits firmly in 1985, blissfully unaware of kitschy post-millenial imitators; it is dirtier, colder, sadder. It can’t touch me anymore, but I sometimes wish it could.
Do wait for the horns.
