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:: Track list & details
The Television Personalities (the nom de musique of songwriter Daniel Treacy) have been consciously swimming against the current since they cut "Part Time Punks" in 1978, always confounding expectations and challenging whatever happened to be the musical flavor of the month. Following in the steps of a punk revolution that blew the pop paradigm to smithereens, TVP's fierce DIY aesthetic and blend of acoustic and electric instruments foreshadowed a lot of the music known today as alternative or indie. By placing passion above precision and making music with all its rough, human edges intact, Treacy and his various co-conspirators have created an eccentric body of confessional rock that never sounds self-conscious, or more importantly self-indulgent.
For the last decade or so, Treacy has been MIA—some even assumed he'd died. Turns out, he was in jail (on unspecified charges) and upon his release, plunged into recording My Dark Places. Like 1995's I Was A Mod Before You Was A Mod, this album plunges us into his battered psyche to see what remains after the cyclone has abated. Yet the playing here is actually competent (!) and there's even a bit of humor in evidence. On "Velvet Underground," Treacy asks, "How did the Velvet Underground get that sound?" as a piano boogie tinkles in the background and vocalist Victoria Yeulet does a spot-on imitation of Mo Tucker's singing.
On most tracks, however, Treacy half-sings with a deadpan tone that often adds so much drama to the lyrics that they're hard to listen to—not because of the dissonance, but because his emotions are so raw and exposed. A droning organ and a kettledrum that slowly builds in volume and intensity are the only accompaniments to "Ex-Girlfriend Club," a list of those who have wounded Treacy in love. His vocals have so much helpless bile, you can understand why his relationships fail. "I'm Not Your Typical Boy" picks the scabs off childhood hardships without any romanticism. With its nursery rhyme chorus, fuzzy guitars, and piledriver rhythm section, the title track comes close to being a pop song, but the hopeless vocals drain the track of optimism. When the sun does shine through, as it does on the sweet and guileless love song "Tell Me About Your Day," it only serves to illuminate the rest of the album's grim, but hypnotically bleak aura.
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