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.
