Here is a word to the wise, a warning to the parvenu: women don’t care for your poet’s soul. Peddling a line in broken hearts is nothing new, but it’s compelling how angry Ian McNabb is in his third decade of making pop music. I’d love to meet the woman who tore his heart out and threw it under a commuter train, inciting him to write Before All Of This. With Whitman-esque enumerations of love gone bad; love affairs cut short, scorned love, unrequited love, obsessive stalker love and unsatisfied love; the Mercury-nominated lyricist’s enmity and excoriations of ladies young and old are as energetic as they are varied.
Divided into acoustic and electric halves, the album doffs its cap to Neil Young, whose musical influence asserts itself elsewhere on ‘Lovers At The End Of Time’. High points include ‘Keeping Your Love Alive’ and ‘Finally Getting Over You’, before we get into more tenebrous territory.
‘Rider (Heartless Mare)’, melodically reminiscent of The Cars’ ‘Drive’, uses that classic metaphor of paramour as lovely horse, “Don’t you try to mount the heartless mare,” he forwarns. Indeed, if only we could legislate for relationship etiquette, “There oughta be a law against a little tramp like you” sings the disconsolate soul. Nice.
Bitter couplets abound in the second act too, “Do I have to lead you by the hand?/Which part don’t you understand?” is the peevish gist of the love song you might sing to your stupid girlfriend, if you had one.
With further showcasing of extant feelings of pride, rage, remorse and umbrage in ‘The Lonely Ones’, there is a long, angry guitar solo – easily identifiable as the kind you’d perfect over many a night spent alone. “The blood line endeth here” is the irascible conclusion.
It’s funny how the sleeve notes are dedicated ‘To lovers everywhere”. It should probably read “To lovers everywhere, fuck you.”