Valentine’s Day calls for one of two musical reactions: drippy accession to the whole thing by playing love songs all day, or by listening to something wholly inappropriate.
The latter seems to be harder to come by in the new music world – bands are now so eagle-eyed that every calendar date is an opportunity for a quickly dashed-off tie-in. The Valentines song! The Anti-valentines song! All readily available for easy embedding into your music blog!
I don’t believe The Fucked Up Beat created their song Paranoia especially for such an occasion as this. If they did, it was a masterpiece of forethought and planning.
Paranoia, and its sister songs on the equally cheerful Paranoia/Erosion/Rust/Funerals/Death EP, are formed from found sounds, field recordings and a melody from what sounds, to these ears, like a rhythmically-thumbed harmonium.
As an ode to love it’s pretty much useless, but as a reminder that life is frighteningly finite and that we should pretty much all get on with enjoying it, it’s flawless.
There are songs that hypnotise through sheer endurance and persistence – and Paranoia is one of them. Creepy, cold, but curiously tender.