Eugene McGuinness

Daytrotter Session - Aug 15, 2012

Eugene McGuinness – Daytrotter Session – Aug 15, 2012
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  1. Welcome to Daytrotter
  2. Shotgun
  3. Harlequinade
  4. Lion
  5. Sugarplum

Eugene McGuinness’s newest album, “The Invitation To The Voyage,” is all the reminder that we should need to reaffirm the very fact that we’re nothing but animals. Every single one of us red-blooded folks is even more red-blooded than we’d give ourselves credit for, or that we’d be willing to admit. We’d like to believe that we’re so much more than simple beasts, with hungry eyes and thirsty lips, with pangs of utter decadence. We’d like to believe that we’re sophisticated, that the money spent attending a four-year university had refined and cultured us into beings that could never be confused for simple animals who just go to where the food, the bed or the fuck are. But, whether we’ll admit it or not, we all belong behind bars when those natural tendencies start to kick in. This record, and the rolling narrative that McGuinness provides is not just a peek, but a full-frontal look at the ways that we behave when no one’s looking, however, they are still drawn in a way that puts them, contextually, in a very social way. He sings, “We’re going for the jugular and we’re going downtown,” and you can almost feel yourself shot-gunning beers and slinging shots out to all your friends, buying them for the pretty girls that you think might appreciate the sway that might be contained in the sloshing fluid. Going out for a night is a war. It’s two brown bears, up on their hind legs, taping vicious swipes at one another. It’s fur flying, teeth and panties bared. It’s ruthless and energized. The songwriter from Leytonstone, London, takes us into the clubs, the electric arcades, and it seems even a few flophouses. When we come out of these places, our animalistic urges and those of the people that have been around us have gotten the better of everyone. It’s ugly. Folks are black and blue, battered and bruised, but they don’t appear to be complaining too loudly. They might have even felt it all coming. Of course they did. McGuinness sings on “Concrete Moon,” “Grab your umbrella and hover over town/Where they’re tearing those decorations down/You cast a spell on those lotharios and clowns, no doubt/I hear a rhapsody for a concrete moon/Before a chandelier of frozen tears I loom/Where all the painted ladies haunt these furnished rooms/Wiping their mouths.” It’s slightly scandalous — that is if the word means anything when the blood’s red enough.

 
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