[12] Electronic, ‘Get The Message’

Electronic

Everyone liked this at the time. It’s a pleasant little ditty with rolling guitar loops and join-the-dots karaoke lyrics in true Barney Sumner-style, and it’s never going to polarise opinion. Junior and I let it wash over us, as she sat and smiled on the sofa and I took a couple of photos of her in her Fat Willy’s t-shirt. Just to prove to Aunt Aggie that she’s worn it.

Electronic were less than the sum of their parts, or maybe just dead-on. With Sumner, Johnny Marr and the occasional Neil Tennant, they were the cream of the discerning man’s 80s pop but the album was just, well, nice. We were missing the menacing Hooky basslines, Morrissey’s acerbicisms (actually anything other than facile lyrics) and Lowe’s sonic adventure. A supergroup missing the point, maybe.

The clattering drum rolls sound like tin cans being dragged up onto the curb. I like that.