W is for…”Where On Earth Is Kevin Shields” by PS I Love You. A long and little-spoken-of tradition is here continued: the indie novelty single. Always on 7″, always a one-day-wonder in the press, always but always about another band. Did the Television Personalities kick it off, I wonder, with “I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives”? It doesn’t matter. The stable door gaped and this particular scrofulous nag was free. The roll of ignominy: “The Day I Lost My Pastels Badge”; “I Know Someone Who Knows Someone Who Knows Alan McGee Quite Well”; “Morrissey Rides A Cockhorse”; “Kylie’s Got A Crush On Us”; “I Want To Be Grant McLennan”.
Now joined by this, a ditty whose 1998 topicality has been thwarted by Kevin Shields’ reappearance pedal-pushing for the Primals. How inconsiderate! Not, I’m sure, that PS I Love You had any illusions about their place in posterity, being awful and all. The singer can’t carry a tune, which is just as well, since he can’t write one either. The music is a rough sketch of a song, enslaved to its comedy chorus. Still, it does its job and makes its jokes, and as all the bonus you could ask boasts one snidey couplet: “The Gallagher brothers masqueradin’ around town as geniuses / Like Beatlemania with tiny penises”.