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.