Quirk Your Enthusiasm (3)

By: Devin McKinney
August 3, 2016

One of 25 installments in a series of posts analyzing and celebrating a few of our favorite New Wave songs from c. 1977–1982. Josh Glenn’s series introduction is here, and you can listen to the QUIRK YOUR ENTHUSIASM playlist here. Enjoy!

“FRANKIE TEARDROP” | SUICIDE | 1977

Suicide were Alan Vega and Martin Rev, punk snobs whose music was nothing but keyboard and voice, and who did almost everything they could to not have a career. Seven years in, someone let them make an album. “Frankie Teardrop” is its epic — its “Moonlight Mile” or “A Day in the Life.”

Built on programmed rhythm and Norelco-shaver riff, the sound is thin, anxious, tortured. The words describe a living ghost: we don’t know where Frankie came from or what he wanted, only that he’s twenty, wife and child, works in a factory, can’t survive. Sob story. Imagine Lou Reed’s Berlin scored entirely for Farfisa and done in double-time, or a Springsteen workingman’s lament stripped to first and last verses.

Frankie doesn’t quite exist. But his Hell does. Vega has the hot fear of a man running over burning coals; beat and riff won’t stop chasing him. Three and a half minutes in, he releases a clipped, sudden shriek, as from the first lick of hellfire. Frankie’s so desperate gonna kill his wife and kid.

And then he does it: kills them. Dylan ended “Hollis Brown” there. But “Frankie” isn’t half over. It’s going where other sob stories wouldn’t go: straight to Hell. As in, Frankie’s lying in Hell. Got it? The remaining minutes elongate into forevers. Strange sounds roar up and retreat: whooshing cars, phantom factories, screams unlike any on earth.

We’re all lying in Hell, it ends. “Frankie Teardrop” is no sociology of sob. It’s a recovery, from the slagheaps of Late Industry and Seventies squalor, of the same things Dante was after: passion, horror, retribution. It’s nihilism with a hungry heart. It’s a postmodern transgression that leaves burn marks. It’s one version of the New Wave, and what it says is: All aboard.

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QUIRK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Mark Kingwell on Soft Cell’s TAINTED LOVE | Joanne McNeil on Gary Numan’s METAL | Devin McKinney on Suicide’s FRANKIE TEARDROP | Douglas Wolk on Family Fodder’s SAVOIR FAIRE | Elina Shatkin on Marianne Faithfull’s BROKEN ENGLISH | Steph Burt on Altered Images’ HAPPY BIRTHDAY | Greg Rowland on Jilted John’s JILTED JOHN | Gordon Dahlquist on XTC’s RESPECTABLE STREET | Adrienne Crew on D-Day’s TOO YOUNG TO DATE | Jonathan Lethem on The Blue Nile’s I LOVE THIS LIFE | Josh Glenn on Tim Curry’s I DO THE ROCK | Molly Wright Steenson on Missing Persons’ WORDS | Anthony Miller on The Nails’ 88 LINES ABOUT 44 WOMEN | Luc Sante on The Normal’s WARM LEATHERETTE | Mimi Lipson on Dolly Mixture’s HOW COME YOU’RE SUCH A HIT WITH THE BOYS, JANE? | Tim Carmody on Talking Heads’ LIFE DURING WARTIME | Ingrid Schorr on Ian Dury’s CLEVOR TREVER | Adam McGovern on Lene Lovich’s LUCKY NUMBER | Deb Chachra on Rough Trade’s HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL | Tor Aarestad on Oingo Boingo’s LITTLE GIRLS | David Smay on The B-52’s’ DANCE THIS MESS AROUND | Jessamyn West on Blondie’s HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE | Drew Daniel on The Human League’s MARIANNE | Erik Davis on Tuxedomoon’s TIME TO LOSE | Dan Fox on Thomas Dolby’s EUROPA & THE PIRATE TWINS.

MORE ENTHUSIASM SERIES at HILOBROW

Quirk Your Enthusiasm (3)

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