I was listening to Marc Riley’s 6music show today whilst cooking my dinner and a track came on, it was a peculiar mix of sounds, primarily it reminded me of Baz Luhrman‘s Everybody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen, but there was something else about it, I’d missed the introduction to the track and the outro was obscured by the sound of the kettle. What stayed in my brain were the backing vocals, they were sung in a distinctive accent and suddenly it dawned on my that it was a song by Simple Kid. More importantly, a new song by Simple Kid.
Simple Kid, aka Ciaran McFeely, released his debut album SK1 in 2003, I remember reading a four star review in Q magazine and bought it on impulse, I became hooked, especially to the jaunty track The Average Man, a delightful list of the time spent doing such wonderful things as shaving. Elsewhere the LP was full of wonky and ambitious pop that encompassed a broad range of inflluences in a very personal style.
It was three years until Simp’s follow-up album, and that felt like a long time coming! I believe, if my memory is not mistaken, that I read in an interview with Ciaran that he had turned his back on music shortly after the first record and gone to work in a video shop. However the need to feed his Muse was too strong and he recorded his second record, SK2 which came out in October 2006.
It is a far greater album than its predecessor, Ciaran’s song-writing craft was utterly refined and diversified, whilst The Twenty Something did echo The Average Man, there were the likes of Mommy n Daddy a gorgeously grimy indie-riff with explosive choruses, the poignant and beautiful Oh Heart, Don’t Be Bitter and the grandiose call-to-arms of Serotonin. It’s a superb album, one I often listen to and I will always drop a track from it on those rare occasions I get to DJ.
However it has been a long time since that record came out, I remember checking Simple Kid’s now non-existent MySpace a seeing posts about recording this and that or trying to put a band together for a tour, but nothing concrete. That didn’t really worry me, there was a scruffy, ramshackle charm to the way he operated, matched by self-deprecating humour. I never doubted things, his talent was too great, his music too good for him not to return, and it’d be worth the wait.
Despite listening to SK2 a lot over Christmas 2011 I hadn’t Googled about to see if Simple Kid had anything new on the horizon, so once I realised what Marc Riley was playing I got excited, promptly Googling the words Simple Kid and The Road (the repeated refrain from the song), sure enough there it was, but, scrolling through the first page of results a few worrying words appeared, which lead me to the Simple Kid website where this announcment had been posted in mid-2011:
SIMPLE KID. R.I.P.
UPDATE: AS MANY OF YOU WILL HAVE GUESSED BY NOW, THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER MUSIC, TOURS, RELEASES ETC BY SIMPLE KID… DONE N DUSTED.
THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO JOINED IN OVER THE YEARS AND THANKS TO ALL THOSE WHO SENT EMAILS OF ENCOURAGEMENT ETC.
IT’S BEEN FUN…
NOW I’M OFF TO DO SOMETHING ELSE
THANKS
A few other blog posts lead me to a track purported to have been one of the demos for the unfinished SK3 record, as well as a cover of The Carpenters‘ Top Of The World, whilst The Road was getting a posthumous release on Static Caravan records seemingly thanks to Gideon Coe and Marc Riley of 6music giving it a fair degree of air play. Elsewhere there are comments on articles wondering if indeed this heralds the arrival of the third record, or if this one track is the final death rattle.
Fittingly the track has a strange journeyman vibe, rattling scrappy guitars over an odd burbling bassline and processed drums. Simple Kid applies an auto-tune filter to his spoken word narration giving it a strangely robotic feeling, creating an ironic frisson in the optimistic lyrics, further contrasted by the sweet, beautiful backing vocals. The fact that this is probably the wave goodbye makes the track even more poignant, and it casts some light onto the frustrations that perhaps plagued Ciaran as he endeavoured to make his music; ‘Older now, no longer hip to the groove, I am roadkill, as the headlights of mainstream culture throttle mercilessly down upon me.’
But the track is not depressing, it’s bittersweet – as most of Simple Kid’s music tends to be – but ultimately positive and joyful.
I wish Ciaran the most success in whatever he decides to do as he travels on down the road, and I urge you to take a nosey through the Simple Kid back catalogue, and, if you enjoy this track be a good music fan and buy a copy from Static Caravan at the following link:
http://www.staticcaravan.org/item.asp?Ref=243
[Rating:4]
