Fairground Attraction: "The First of A Million Kisses"
Like the title suggests, Fairground Attraction's The First Of
A Million Kisses (1988) is best suited to those tender moments,
a wistful soundtrack to the first flush of love. There are songs
here to match the mood of a country walk hand-in-hand, and there
are songs to complement the melancholy star-gazing of a balmy
night. With their first single Perfect (included here) already
a big hit, we can expect young love this summer to bud to these
soothing sounds. Only the duo Everything But The Girl will be
gnashing their teeth in frustration: what did they do wrong that
Fairground Attraction have done so consummately right? Buggered
if I know, though I would hazard that Eddi Reader's voice has
somehow touched a popular nerve which Tracey Thorn's simply has
not.
Eddi Reader might already be a familiar noise without our quite realising it. With Fairground Attraction she steps out of the vocal shadow of such belters as Eurythmics, Waterboys, Alison Moyet and Billy MacKenzie, to whose performances she has lent her honeyed tonsils. They may have acquired something of the small-hours jazz inflections of Rickie Lee Jones, but Eddi Reader's vocal chords remain unmistakably and plaintively British in origin.
The mood, therefore, of her group is of student coffee-bars-and that is not intended negatively. Perhaps it is the trad jazz and picturesque folk roots of Fairground Attraction's music that puts me in mind of cellar-bars, chunky sweaters and roll-ups. But just as redolent is the carefully detailed wordsmithery at work here, which nods as much to the confessional kitchen sink school of Elvis Costello and Squeeze (most notably in the exquisitely melodic Moon On The Rain) as to our old friends Everything But The Girl.
My personal favourite, though, is the actual track Fairground Attraction. Arranged for a queasy accordion and even more sinister calliope, it evokes the threatening grotesquerie that sometimes lurks beneath carnival merriment, very much in the style of Bertolt Brecht & Kurt Weill's -Threepenny Opera-.
But for all the influences whose threads you can unpick, an innate easy-going tunefulness and delicacy of touch (for which we must additionally thank songwriter-guitarist Mark E Nevin, guitarist Simon Edwardes and drummer Roy Dodds) gently stamp out Fairground Attraction's identity at first time of trying. Though I suspect long exposure to The First Of A Million Kisses might in the end rot the stomach-lining, for now it is sweet music indeed.
Reviewer: Mat Snow
from Amazon.com