Quirk Your Enthusiasm (14)

By: Lucy Sante
August 14, 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!

“WARM LEATHERETTE” | THE NORMAL | 1978

Punk’s instruction that three chords make a song may have launched a thousand ships, but The Normal’s “Warm Leatherette” (1978) may have ultimately propelled ten thousand more, demonstrating that technology made it possible to dispense with learned musical skills altogether. The backing track is as minimal as minimal gets, merely a two-note sawtooth wave underlaid with a rumpa-bumpa bass line, both obviously produced on the sort of cheap synthesizer just then becoming available to the average consumer.

What catches and holds the listener’s attention, though, is the vocal, which isn’t even sung. Flatly and neutrally, as if the record consisted of cut-and-pasted lines from a high-school road-safety scare film, it commands you to see the breaking glass in the underpass, to hear the crushing steel and feel the steering wheel. The total absence of emotional signifiers makes the images all the more chilling, just as that lack powered the number’s source, J.G. Ballard‘s epochal Crash (1973). Daniel Miller, who made the recording in his apartment using a $150 Korg 700S (and went on to found Mute Records) had been working on a film adaptation of the novel, but gave it up to condense all its dark juju into this three-minute single.

More even than the exhortation to quickly make love before you die, the song’s punctum is the off-rhyme of “burning flesh” and “luminescent dash.” The juxtaposition of images inscribes Ballard’s method on the head of a pin; the extra syllables of “luminescent” introduce a further pedantic distance; the progression from esh to ash traces a dying fall. And then there’s the title, which also functions as a perfunctory chorus: the noncommittal “warm,” the euphemistic “leatherette.” The Normal’s record laid Western civilization to rest. Only ashes and buzzards have followed.

***

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 (14)

Categories

Tags