The cover is a pastiche of The Smiths' 'Hatful of Hollow'. Of course, it is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and openly referencing ones’ sources is a very postmodern thing to do. There have been many covers that appropriate from others - 'The Freewheelin' Mark Arm' and Ween's 'The Pod' are both examples that spring to mind. There are no incongruous gas masks on The Underminers' remake, though, and the vest-wearing Cocteau model is replaced by a woman simply known as Angela. However, much as the band love The Smiths, they're no Smiths rip-off merchants. This is very much a good thing, given that most Smiths rip-off merchants are crap, and 'The Hear Part of Your Mind' is anything but.
Ordinarily, opening an album with a piano ballad is probably not well advised, but 'Slow Dancing' is the sound of pure heartbreak. Justin Hayward’s vocals are beautifully weighted and convey depths of meaning and emotion beyond the simple, minimal lyrics. Across the eleven tracks, Hayward explores deep, dark corners of the human condition: uncertainty, frustration, fear, pain.
'Nothing Guy' is sedate, but poignant and drips emotion. In fact, while not getting much above first gear in the musical stakes, The Underminers imbue the songs with an evocative, subtlety crafted execution, and Hayward's introspective lyrics convey a real sense of sincerity and sadness. 'Nothing Guy' is the sound of a man laying his soul bare with the admission 'I don't wanna die this / Nothing guy.' 'Audacious' is anything but cheeky, but is instead a confessional reflection, in which Hayward admits 'I think I owe you'
'TV Song' is a gloomy paean to the sedative, sedentary nature of the Western culture's favourite pastime. He paints a depressing picture of an empty life in the lines 'My naked belly / Hanging over my belt / And I felt like / Watching TV for the rest of my life'. With or without the belly, most of us have been there at some point or another.
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If ever an album encapsulated the futility of life and relationships, the way it's possible to be in the world and in company while slowly, silently dying inside, it's this one. There are faint glimmers of hope, but it's a very faint hope indeed, forced because it's what's socially expected, but you feel that the speaker already knows he's destined to failure. Yet rarely has such gloominess sounded so glorious, the subdued and understated nature of the songs are frail and delicate, not just on the outside, but to the bare, bare bones that shiver against the cold winds of the grey world. And it is a grey world: The Underminers' palette is a blend of every grey of the colour spectrum, with occasional hints of ice-cold blue.
The fabric of the songs is saturated with a deep sadness. Yet there is no sense of wallowing, instead turning nuances observations into magnificent art. 'A Lovely Time' has the kind of studied artfulness and fragile soul of Talk Talk, and it’s this comparison that actually seems to fit more closely than any Smiths references to the album as a whole, with its apparent simplicity belying the fine details of the compositions and the pervading atmosphere of melancholy.
Underminers on MySpace
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