Song Of The Day 4/3/2015: Sally Timms & the Drifting Cowgirls with Marc Almond - "This House Is a House of Trouble"

Well, this is just a jumbo cereal box of delight. Sally Timms is most known for her ongoing tenure in the Mekons, the greatest group whose albums I can never find. I’ve probably purchased The Mekons Rock ‘n’ Roll about four times in different configurations and I can never seem to hold on to it. Then every once in a decade and a half or so some of their reissues become available for about ten minutes, usually when I’m asleep. It's humiliating. Timms has a rich, amber voice that doesn’t need much more than a microphone that I’m not sure even needs to be turned on. I’ll just leave “Ghosts of American Astronauts” here. At the end of it all that might be one of my 100 favorite songs of all time. I'll have to ask.

Marc Almond, of course, I mean of course, was the visible half of Soft Cell, early victors in the new wave one-hit sweepstakes via their cover of Gloria Jones’ “Tainted Love.” His post-Cell career looks pretty interesting. I wish I’d given it more attention. It’s probably not too late for that. I’m almost afraid to go into it in fear that I’d either omit something or get it wrong. He's no slouch, that's for sure: Wikipedia, that invaluable resource for information about Oleksandr Kovalenko and RNA-binding proteins, says he released three albums in 2014 alone. He just released a new album less than a month ago. Here’s something from it called “Scar.” Feel free to comment upon it somewhere. Could be here, could be somewhere else. It’s Friday.

ANYWAY, Timms and Almond collided in 1987 for a song called “This House Is a House of Trouble.” Almond penned the song; Timms and Almond recorded it with her Drifting Cowgirls. It’s curiously mesmerizing. It starts off as a typically ’80s statement of romantic disaffection, with Almond and Timms hurling snarky spoken asides at each other during the other’s verse. Then it ends in surprising violence, recrimination and half-meant, quickly rescinded apologies. Like I said, it’s Friday.