Television Personalities - Closer To God [CD]

Fire Re-issue, this has not been available for many years on CD. The Television Personalities had been brooding for three years since the release of Privilege, an album that took us to Salvador Dali's Garden Party, among other muses, and aroused All Music to conclude that things were getting dark. Closer To God closed the curtains and ensured they were blackout standard. Closer To God, as with all TVP albums, is mightily personal. Dan Treacy provides the antidote to the opening of the ill-fated Disneyland Paris and the first McDonald's in China it's a white knuckle ride through his innermost hopes and fears with off stage giggling, half heard dialogue and feedback that sounds like an opera is expiring in an adjoining L-shaped room. Pop culture is well thumbed, a nod to Anthony Burgess, the films of Joseph Losey (The Servant, The Go-Between, The Prowler) but for all the whimsy this is an album of self-analysis, a shopping list of broken promises and dashed daydreams which musically travels through lullaby to rage, from Fab Fourland to jangly Byrds-on-a-budget punk all packed neatly into three minute slices perfect for a hospital radio playlist where sectioned surrealists cast no reflection. Except, of course, for the glorious grandeur and heavy grunge of the title track that sounds like the blueprint for every Peter Doherty song. At over eleven minutes it's an anthemic quasi-religious paean to growing up and learning little by recognized means. They still haven't lost the knack of pulling a good tune from seemingly nowhere or coming up with an idea that will tug at your sleeve for attention. A good time is had by all. NME // AH YES, the TV Personalities. A grotesque parody of media manipulation? The Face