Television Personalities - My Dark Places (Domino)
3/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Before 'My Dark Places', the television personality behind the Television Personalities, the one man band who is Daniel Treacy, went missing for some time, his whereabouts completely unknown to friend or foe. It turns out he was in prison, on a boat, doing - as he tells us a mere few lines in to his comeback both in to the music scene and the outside world - "18 months for aggravated burglary". Listen even with only half of your attention focused on the language of this record, and that won't be the last thing you learn about our protagonist.
Drugs, depression, his unluckiness in love, each aren't so much points touched upon as they are wounds licked and scabs picked at. This isn't about painting a picture with words; it's about employing you for sixteen tracks to be a psychotherapist, to listen whilst you're told in the most literal of terms exactly what Treacy might be thinking. There aren't many well crafted songs here, the musicianship (and blind trust in the listener too, come to think of it) is often childlike, the point often crude or overstretched. The worth of this record, apart from a few brief, sunny moments of cuteness, is that this is the most honest anyone could, or should, ever be.
So the Television Personalities are not about mystery. There's no feeling of hero worship towards those behind 'My Dark Places'. Sometimes arrives pity, at others mild disdain, but not once comes the idea that you'd like to live in their shoes, nor want to know more about them beyond the painfully frank exchanges presented here, there, and everywhere. Neither is it about admiring anyone as a musician - really, this makes Babyshambles sound like Yes - it's only purpose is as a medium through which Daniel Treacy can talk. And it has you, an audience, because there's no point in talking if nobody's listening.
Even at its darkest moments, the harrowing 'Sick Again', melancholically touching 'I'm Not Your Typical Boy' (no kidding, Dan) or bitter disco of 'You Kept Me Waiting Too Long' (on which it's told "you can scream and shout, but I'll put it in a song", which you don't doubt for a minute), being as they are sung in such a cheeky manner and often underpinned by the most innocent and quirky of Casio beats, it's easy to tell that there's some humour here. And when it crops up, as it's surrounded by such gloom everywhere else, not only does it come across as comic genius but also the work of a song writing mastermind, a mere combination of a few coherently strummed chords can be music to the ears when you've spent so long listening to something which would be quite so difficult to honestly describe as real music at all.
And so, thank gawd for those few giggles. "I've been to the metropolitan place of... art, whatever... I wasn't impressed" Dan states on 'Velvet Underground'. And it's there, the place where the eternal mystery of how Lou Reed, John Cale and company got their sound is discussed, that this all makes sense. The reason that this exists, and that anyone still cares, is because the Television Personalities really love making music. So they're not particularly adept at it. That hasn't stopped them in three decades. And because it hasn't yet, and in spite of it they can still make thoroughly admirable, unique records, it never should.
Artists in this article: Television Personalities
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