The music on this cassette forms an emotional diptych. One side is about loneliness and longing, the other about lust and sex; two pieces of bedroom-conceived emotional-exhibitionism. The recording sounds rough: the guitar fuzzes and the vocals distort in the high registers. It adds an authenticity, the feeling that this would have been recorded even if only for the singers edification or as a diary entry.
As I flip the tape over and over and over (it’s very short) the phrase “to be universal you must be specific” keeps going through my head (actually the title of a Dalhous track, I’ve come to find out). The specificity of the lyrics is what makes it work, were these lyrics replaced with the usual blanket statements of a pop song it would all fall apart and be easily dismissed as so much piffle. But snuggled between what sounds like a drowned organ and hand-clap percussion mixed low enough to be mistaken for a moth beating against a window, the lyrics take on a confessional quality. They are not bashful or coy, but unassuming; like a story told without making eye-contact or somewhere between a whispered secret and a held-tongue.
