Paris
"Paris", Moshi Moshi Records 2007, artwork Edward Gibson
It’s touching, because it sounds so naïve – just saying “One day we’re going to live in Paris” already marks you out as a starry-eyed innocent. Paradoxically, it might mark you out as unimaginative as well – as dreams go, it’s hardly exceptional in these days of incessant pressure to try and explore everything within reach of transportation, and then try and find something beyond it (because to be satisfied nowadays is to betray your own potential; worse even, you’re refusing your sacred duty to keep the economy running). Neither difficult, nor original, dreaming of Paris is conventional, provincial even: it ushers in nostalgia, it’s old-fashioned; it almost smells of under-achievement, one should really be striving to spend one’s next holiday in another planet or bungee-jump from a satellite.
Not that any of this should have even crossed the mind of the boy who sings Friendly Fires‘s Paris (who may or may not be Ed McFarlane). But it’s precisely the simplicity and the intensity of this wish that make the song so powerful. Unlike the narrator in Opportunities (Let’s make lots of money), who strives to be cleverer and more manipulative than everyone else in a world of schemers (and, by Neil Tennant’s own reckoning, is doomed to fail), the boy who promises to take his friend (lover?) to Paris doesn’t come across as even knowing the word “cynicism”. It’s an affordable dream, he doesn’t have to trample over anyone to achieve it.
Having said that, this “affordable” is of course from the viewpoint of Europeans of a certain income. Paris remains beyond the possibilities of a sizeable portion of the world’s population, regardless of what travel agents say. Okay, so “Europeans of a certain income” are presumably Friendly Fires’s main audience; even so, the boy, who is probably not quite maling a killing just yet, talks about living there, and in style; this is expensive, and speaks of unrelenting faith in oneself. He is so clearly convinced that it’ll happen, so sure that nothing will stand in his way, and so likeable, that you want him to be right (not least because he said he’s taking you too); it will be devastating if he turns out to be wrong. [1] The way Ed sings “When I’m bringing in the money” alone, as if it were a foregone conclusion, is enough to break your heart. It grabs you either because you’re still under the same spell or – if you’re a bit older – because it brings back memories of when you were, of what it meant to be like that, and of the sheer force of being like that. Paris pulls you back to when it was a fair bet that the opportunities still to come far outnumbered those already missed and the future could still be taken for granted.
I write this well aware that I cannot possibly know what feelings this song will trigger on people the right age (i.e. that of the guys in the group), who surely don’t need to be reminded of what it feels like to be young. Having said that, a future doesn’t need to be behind you before you can feel nostalgic about it, or indeed about your present, regardless of age. It’s romance, it’s adrenalin, and it makes your heart race.
2nd release, XL Recordings 2008, artwork (presumably): Jon Beasley
It could have been a disaster had Friendly Fires not managed to make it sound so artless. (I don’t know enough to say it was artless: it can take an inordinate amount of effort to achieve such effects.) With Ed’s urgency balanced by Au Revoir Simone’s angelic backing vocals and its ethereal keyboard washes unsettled by clattering, almost manic percussion that sounds like it’ll disintegrate into the rattling of tin cans tied to the bumper of a car (but doesn’t), Paris sounds at once lush and thrown together, the sonic equivalent of people with such good wardrobes they can pull things out with eyes closed and look great anyway. This is true of most of the album it’s in: though nothing else is quite as intense, every song sounds fresh, unfussy and vital. It must have to do with self-production: the songs have clearly been polished (just compare the original EP version of Photobooth to that which ended in the album) –
[audio:http://scrapheap.imonemus.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Photobooth-single-Snippet1.mp3|titles=Photobooth (EP version)](“Photobooth”, from the Photobooth EP, People in the Sky 2006)
[audio:http://scrapheap.imonemus.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Photobooth-album-Snippet.mp3|titles=Photobooth (album version)](“Photobooth”, from Friendly Fires, XL Recordings 2008)
– but you can still pretend they sneaked out past the record company before anyone could give them that last deadening tidy-up touch.
Paris was originally released as a single by Moshi Moshi Records in 2007, then appeared on the debut album, and was eventually re-released as a remix set (Aeroplane‘s replacing all of Ed’s vocals with Au Revoir Simone). The single sleeves already show a move towards greater sophistication, but the promo videos are even more eloquent. The first, directed by Price James, is a filmed performance with animation on the background and occasional detail inserts. It gets the freshness and the innocence across, and much of the zest, even if it is perhaps a bit tame if compared to Friendly Fires live. (Ed can act like a cross between strutting rock n’ roller and St Teresa of Ávila in ecstasy; I was fully expecting him to collapse before the gig was halfway through, and me to follow suit. We didn’t.) The re-release promo was directed by Chris Sweeney (perhaps confusingly, to the original song) and is a thing of formal beauty that plays with kaleidoscopes and I M Pei’s Louvre pyramid. It is dazzling and strangely serene, particularly when particularly when a static Ed coolly lip-syncs to his own, far more passionate voice. It is dreamy; wistful. Rather than compete, the two videos complement each other.
Notes
[1] Another opposition to Opportunities, which doesn’t invite you to feel sorry at all for the schemers when their scheme finally falls apart. (Neil speaks about it in terms of a punchline.) For Pet Shop Boys songs that have the same combination of energy and wistfulness as Paris, you could try Tonight is forever from please, or, even better, Bright young things (perversely hidden away as an extra track to their single Numb, when it is head and shoulders above it and in fact above much of the Fundamental album too).
Tags: Friendly Fires, music, Opportunities (Let's make lots of money), Paris (Friendly Fires song), Pet Shop Boys