5. (2010s-present)
The band still released tons of indie bangers. Electronica and disco synths have started to seep in, for the better. For example, “I Love Indiepop”, “Rockaway Beach”, “It’s My Club” are all modern bangers.
However, it is also probably not a /leftypol/ post without some class-struggle analysis. Starting with “Our Mum and Dad” from “Day-Glo Dreams”, whose lyrics took me by surprise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8VYKBy9yUw "Dad built new houses for George Wimpey Estates. That’s where he first learnt his trade. And his hands were full of blisters blood and dirt. And his life was set in love and faith and work.”
“She worked part-time, 3 days a week at the bank. Saving us bottle tops and Green Shield stamps. That damn Ted Heath he don’t understand.”
”Our mum and dad they turned older and grey. I watched Margaret Thatcher take their jobs away”
“And we pin our hopes on things that are so frail. We try so hard but fabulously fail…”
In a 3-minute synth-pop song, “Our Mum and Dad” portrays a working-class Welsh family, where Helen’s dad is a construction worker and her mom work part-time in a bank and collect grocery stamps to make ends. If this song was song by a gruff older Welsh/Scott man, with an acoustic guitar rather than indie pop synths, then it might make it as Bob Dylan-esque social commentary song. Combined with her songs about Cardiff City, this paints a picture of a shy girl who grew up in a working-class family, go to watch Cardiff City games with her dad, and dreamed to be a punk rocker. It paints a picture of working-class family that got run over by neoliberalism of Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher. It paints a picture of a punk rock indie girl who refused to relent on her ideals.
Helen Love released “Sunburst Superkay” about 15 years earlier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPGgjfdr_NY The boy next door had curly hair Like Brian May meets Yogi Bear He bought a Les Paul flash guitar On his mother’s credit card.”
You won’t get far with that stupid Kay guitar, little girl, what you do with that Woolworth’s cheap guitar?
At the time the song was an innocuous, bubblegum pop song making fun of an untalented boy who bought expensive guitar with his mother’s credit card. It was also an ode to her trusty Woolie Kay guitar, which has been dubbed “the Kalashnikovs of guitars for their durability” which is totally in character with the band’s DIY indie ethos.
But in retrospect, there is also clearly a class element there, that this wide-eyed idealistic girl who was oozing talent, capable of writing extremely catchy punk pop songs, loves Joey Ramone, but cannot afford a Les Paul guitar. There is also “Diet Cola Girl” released around the same time – a song where a young punk rocker Helen Love endlessly slated “Claire, an office executive who wears white linen dress.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEwDN6R8iJ4