There are rainy days and then there are days when it’s
raining (actually a good first sentence for a novel). Rainy days are tolerable
and can even be called romantic if you’re in that sort of mood. Days when it’s
raining, on the other hand, leave not a vestige of hope. They depress the guts
out of you. It’s just one massive stream of intensely grey water that looks
like it is never going to stop
pouring down. It’s like a pair of grizzly, horribly overused lenses that make
your eyesight even worse.
And accidentally – I’ve found the perfect album for a day
like that. On a bus taking me to the airport, at 8 in the ghastly morning, I
decided to play an album which had not done much for me up to that point. Wire’s
self-titled (interesting how some bands choose to go for this righteous excuse
so late in their career) album from 2015. It just merged so well with these
overwhelming floods slashing down the bus windows and made it all seem so much
better. The album and the day when it was raining.
By the time of “In Manchester” I’d been converted. But it
all started here.
