CINERAMA
Torino
Manifesto
· On David Gedge’s shoulders sit a mopey-eyed Burt Bacharach and the sexy trollop named Serge Gainsbourg. Bacharach is stone drunk and Gainsbourg is left to poison Gedge's mind. These are dark times.
Bandmates David Gedge and Sally Murrell must have the most committed relationship ever, since Gedge apparently gets away with singing about the subject in Cinerama's songs. Since the band’s inception, he’s pretty much described every possible way in which two people can love one another – and how they can fuck each other over.
After Gedge’s previous band, The Wedding Present (a group that was far more important to contemporary guitar rock than the Smiths), went into indefinite hiatus, the forlorn indie-rock nerd re-cast himself as a suave and elegant crooner trying to pen the ultimate John Barry soundtrack. However, the release of Cinerama's third record, Torino, takes Gedge's obsessive examination of love – and the pain it can cause – to the next level.
One has to wonder how much of his vast catalogue consists of different snapshots of the same thrilling but ultimately disastrous relationship. Never before has he shown this much jealousy in song. Much of the album sounds like it was lifted from the 57th pleading phone conversation between estranged lovers. He expresses this brooding aura musically with his strongest guitar in years, and blankets his sentiment with disconcerting howls.
Like Woody Allen's persona as an over-sexed but extremely fragile egomaniac, much of this hurt comes from Gedge's own self-loathing unconscious. He’s far more likely to be hurt when he finds out his lover had an orgasm during her affair than he is from just finding out about the affair itself.
Perhaps his ill choice of female companions is what creates this heartbroken loser syndrome. On "Quick Before it Melts," one of the album’s few lighter moments, his female character teases him by claiming, "I don’t wear underwear because it make us dry." One can just hear how excited this bit of flirting makes him and this immediate exhilaration is what dooms Gedge’s character – he’s left helpless in the face of seduction.
Once, on a Cinerama B-side called "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," Gedge made the statement that his lover was just a female version of him, capable of the same things that he himself is tempted by. It’s interesting to note that for all the time he cries about being left on his own, he spends an equal amount of time contemplating the sensual textures of others and what delights they might hold. Complex, old codger!
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