Prozac and Whimsy

Towards the end of our marriage my ex threw a glass at me. She missed as she was a terrible shot. It exploded against the wall and I “had” to clear up the mess that “I” had made.

Happy people have no stories.

The first McDonalds I can remember having was a happy meal late on a Sunday afternoon after my parents had spent all day rowing over the latest affair to come to light. They stayed together on mine and my sisters say so and we were taken out for a treat as a result.

Happy people have no stories.

I finally left my ex after she punched me in the back of the head as I was trying to get away from her during an argument over her staying out all night again.

Happy people have no stories.

I came home from work early once and found my ex with her hands down her knickers cyber sexing with someone on AOL while our children watched the Tweenies in the same room.

Happy people have no stories.

I caught my sister’s godfather balls deep in my mum one night while my dad was working away.

Happy people have no stories.

I can’t say for sure that my son is definitely mine.

Happy people have no stories.

I used to be sent to watch my dad play football so he had to come home as soon as he had finished.

Happy people have no stories.

The year is 1995. I am a sullen teenager in a dead end town who doesn’t really fit in anywhere. I have failed most of my exams in a beautiful act of straight up dumbfuckery and am cruising towards catering college as I kind of like to cook and you need no results to get in. I’ll still drop out in not quite two years time. My head is full of noise that I don’t understand or have any idea how to deal with.

I smoke Malboro Reds and my party trick is to put them out on my hand. I steal homebrewed cider from my uncles shed and drink or smoke anything that gets passed my way. This dickhead version of me who rolled up to college was a totally different me than the one who left school.

It helped that only two people I went to school with ended up on the same course for pretty much the same reasons. We had some sort of silent pact that we could all be different now as no one else knew us and school was such a long time ago anyway.

I’ve said before that as brilliant as Troublegum is, it isn’t *MY* Therapy? record. I’ve spoken about how Semi-Detached is the greatest album released in 1998 and how Cleave is the one that I consider their best. But the summer of 1995 gave us Infernal Love in all of it’s twisted, beautiful, flawed, brilliance.

Infernal Love is *MY* Therapy? album. It’s the one I hold close to my chest and sit and listen to on a loop for days on end without coming up for air. It starts off with a weird electric thrumming and then a scream of guitar and drums and bass all come crashing in as one before the one and only Mr Andy Cairns informs us that he has a problem and it burns like wire. I was immediately hooked.

At times it’s a frantic album that feels like that point of insomnia where the shadows start to dance at the corner of your vision. At other times it’s slow and bleak and feels like you are at your own wake. It is so close to prefection for me but, and there is always a but, the samples that buffer the tracks still seem like an bizarre choice over 30 years later.

The whole of the album feels like an bizarre choice. Troublegum came out in 94 and conquered the world. They could have toured, chilled their beans, toured a bit more, chilled their beans a bit more and then maybe, MAYBE, gone back into the studio when they were good and ready. Instead a frazzled and fraught band somehow launched Infernal Love at us sixteen months later. It’s an insane turn around and one that almost broke them. They admit they should have had some time off. It was too much for Fyfe Ewing the original drummer, he of the impossibly tight snare and he was never to be seen again.

Much like The Holy Bible from the year before Infernal Love landed with me at the perfect time. It sounded like I felt and still does from time to time. Unlike The Holy Bible I can recognise and pick at its faults. The already mentioned samples spoil the flow of tracks for me. Bowels Of Love is just a fucking odd song and when I saw them celebrate 25 years of the album it was an awkward moment from a truly magnificent night.

But the highlights, my God the highlights! A Moment Of Clarity, Misery, Me Vs. You, Loose. The way they snatched Diane from under Hüsker Dü’ nose and made it their own. And of course Stories.

Stories has run in my head like a mantra since I first heard it. Things get bad and I always come out of the other side of it all even if it is blind luck that sees me through. And there is always a story to tell from it all. Always. Even if I bury it deep down inside of me until I can carry it no more there will always be a story.

Because.

Happy people have no stories.