Almost Cured of Sadness (review)
www.timesonline.co.uk
STEPHEN JONES
Almost Cured of Sadness
(Sanctuary)
STEPHEN JONES is back, having shed his Babybird alias and the albatross round his neck that was his hit, You’re Gorgeous, along with it. He was always an affecting songwriter as well as an extremely able band frontman, but it is these solo lo-fi tinkerings that really provide the keys to his soul.
His latest LP is a delight, an effortless charmer on which the childlike sweetness of his voice perfectly serves 19 deceptively simple songs that together make a series of multi-textured gems. They range from the compulsive rush of Your Time, through the loose, hip-hop-toned Little Thug to the comically see-sawing Quaaludes. Sharon O’Connell (4/5)
No single artist to have emerged from the ugly swamp of mid-nineties indie music was more cursed by his Hit than Stephen Jones. No heavier albatross weighed around one man’s neck, because no sicklier and catchier a tune was written in that strange and ugly decade than BabyBird’s crazed paparazzi anthem, ‘You’re Gorgeous’.
It was “our song” for a million couples, most of whom went on to split up and wince, or spasm uncontrollably every time they heard the thing on the radio. It was reported in one newspaper that a man’s spine liquefied when it came on the restaurant he was in with his new wife. She went into a coma soon after, in which she remains to this very day.
