Kelvingrove Baby
“Sometimes I used to fly away each night
On the wings of an old love song.”
I almost dread having to use the term ‘romantic’ about a song, simply because of the connotations it immediately places in my head, let alone anyone else’s. For some reason, I invariably and unfortunately end up thinking of George Michael singing Careless Whisper throughout what seemed like the entirety of 1984. A soft-focus video featuring the pin-up of so many lustful teenage desires looking woebegone and pained, clutching his chest over where his heart beats with lurve and having clearly borrowed Princess Diana’s hair for the occasion, whilst gently flickering candles burn meaningfully all around him. Oh, and that saxophone. That sodding saxophone solo. When was it decided that a supposedly romantic song was woefully incomplete without a saxophone ungraciously parping its way into the performance?
Calm. Be calm. Show some respect for The Bathers, please.
There are two things wrong with this song, and they are the first and the second word of its title. To begin with the second, I loathe and despise the term “baby” (or “babe” or “babes” or shoot me now, why don’t you?) as both a written and spoken sign of endearment. Say it to me, and I will throw up over your shoes. To follow up with the first, I have never been to Kelvingrove, and only once to Glasgow itself. Sometimes I wish I knew the place that Chris Thomson of The Bathers was singing about, but then I don’t. Because what this moving and emotional piece of music has always brought to mind, since the very first time I heard it, is a bridge. A bridge at dusk, as the sun goes down, to be precise.
“If I could reach you, I would walk all night
To hold you in the racing dawn.
Someday I know that you’ll be back,
Somehow I can hear your laughter in an old love song.”
Standing on that bridge is a man. No, he’s not about to end it all and jump to his watery death in the river below, you can be sure of that. He’s gazing off into the distance. He’s smartly dressed. Elegantly wasted chic, if you like. He looks as if he’s come from some high-class party or other, and has loosened his collar as he swayed, slightly worse for vino, along the city streets. He’s murmuring quietly to himself. He’s in love, deeply in love. He’s not telling you that, of course - you just know because of an unmistakeable distant warmth in his eyes. He’s gazing into the sunset and composing poetry in his head. You want to believe it’s really bad, trite poetry, though you know at the same moment that it isn’t. It can’t be, because what you see of him won’t let you entertain such a notion even for a moment. You watch this lone figure, and then more than anything you want to be inside his thoughts, hearing the music he hears and murmuring the words being shyly whispered from his lips.
The Bathers have been one of my quiet obsessions for a number of years. As with Augie March, they’re my little secret and seemingly no one else’s, and I’m not sure whether I should currently feel proud or ashamed that I’m finally revealing their existence to a wider audience. Like many of the musical choices that fill my CD shelves and litter my computer as MP3 files, they have sold next to no records and go from one year to the next with absolutely nothing being heard of them. I’m not even sure if they currently still exist as a going concern. Their lyrics burst forth with classical pretension and are gin-soaked in overwhelming, almost theatrical emotion - emotion so raw that you don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or just look away and blush with an embarrassed smile on your face. Their melodies and instrumentation luxuriate in grand pianos and even grander strings. There’s even a soaring, swooning opera singer making her presence felt somewhere in the midst of thie beautiful maelstrom. And presumably it’s all produced on such a minuscule budget that most bands wouldn’t even consider it enough to cover the cost of paying their guitar roadie.
Chris Thomson probably hasn’t been able to give up his day job. Artist as doomed failure, then. God loves a trier, and so do I. Hug a musician today, particularly if you see him standing on a bridge, lost in contemplation.
“You want the moment
Touched with magic and immortality.
You want rain, you want soft music,
And the last words to be about love.”
The last words always are, Chris. The last words always are.