2 in a Tent – “When I’m Cleaning Windows (Turned Out Nice Again)”
Will there be mandolins, a suspicious potential punter asked before the last Poptimism. I replied that no, there would not be mandolins, but I was planning to play something with a ukelele in it. Namely this, a raved-up version of George Formby which you might remember nudging the early 90s charts.
I like it, I think it’s funny – not as funny as the original, of course – and I don’t really need to intellectualise it. But I might anyway – it strikes me this is a funhouse version of the approach that Moby took and made millions of dollars from: take a snip of pre-rock sound culture and use ‘dance music’ as a kind of amber to frame and freeze it. Except Moby was all about creating a phoney pathos borrowed from the real sadness of archaeology, 2 in a Tent are all about amusing you for three party minutes. But still they make me fix on little tics of Formby’s voice and delivery, that superb and dying phrase “nosey parker” for instance…