Never heard this before (shame on you, postpunk historian!) and it struck me that it's sort of Vini trying to do PiL
But with proper reggae-band backing...
This is something else altogether, and not much like the later Durutti
Skipping ahead almost a decade and half a discography...
With the drum machine, this next actually sounds like a Durutti Column tune.
Why oh why did Mozz not carry on with Vini? Why take up with Boz?
I really thought VR was both a worthy and an apt successor to Marr... that there was a musical logic of continuity
Not just the obvious spidery delicacy of both's playing, but because the Moz/Reilly chemistry worked according to the same principle as the Marr/Mozz synergy...
As with "Reel Around the Fountain" or "Suffer Little Children" or "I Know It's Over", so with "Late Night Maudlin".... the the more melodically-harmonically interesting is the guitar backdrop, the more exquisite and subtle and emotionally plangent the vocal melody / performance Mozz is capable of coming up with...
I mean compare "Maudlin" with the perky, bouncy nothingness of "International Playboy" or "Certain People I Know" or "Fatty" - or, more recently, the awfully pedestrian, yet inexplicably loved and well-regarded "First of the Gang To Die"....
It's whole different ball game.
The only thing that the post-Polecats Moz generated that comes anywhere near in terms of simple melodic interest and poignancy to the Smiths or Viva Hate tunes is this, I think:
But back to the person this started with.... and whose guitar playing I once described in terms of
"almost vulgar exquisiteness"
He really should have been -- more to the point, could have been, and who else of his generation can you say that about? - on ECM.
Where he'd gave given John Abercrombie and Ralph Towner a run for their money.
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