This is a song rather than an album. It came my way on a friend's end of year compilation and I have also heard it on the radio.
I am talking about this song because I hate it. I do not know who exactly these Imagined Village people are, but they seem to be making some kind of combination of folkie tunes and modern electonic instrumentation, with a vague nod towards dance music (I keep expecting a shuffle beat to appear on this one). " 'Ouses, 'Ouses, 'Ouses" features some old guy going on about how everything was different when he was a lad - he had to walk for miles through the fields to get from his home to go to school and was always worrying about the bailiff catching him in the master's orchard or something. And now when he looks around where there used to be fields it's all "houses, houses, houses" (the song title drops the H to make clear that the man is from a region).
Why do I hate this song? Well, because it is unoriginal anti-modern faux pastoral nostalgic bollocks, inviting us to hark back to a shit time in the past when people were dirt poor and were unable to enjoy the benefits of a modern industrial society. For all that I think there are supposedly progressive people mixed up in this Imagined Village thing (another track by them seems to feature Billy Bragg), it is peddling an unsavoury reactionary world view and inviting us to return to a world where people were poor but happy because they knew their place.
Why not listen to it yourself? You will probably like it.
An inuit panda production
No comments:
Post a Comment