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Rating: Understanding "Titanic Days" is not as easy as it might seem. To fully appreciate it, to grasp all its subtle nuances, the feelings, the sensations contained within, one must contextualize it carefully: those already familiar with Kirsty certainly have an advantage. They know she has never had any reservations about using her music to express ideas and emotions, and throughout her career, she has never tied her name to a specific genre, effortlessly moving from rockabilly to country and through to pop rock, acoustic folk, Caribbean sounds, and much more.
From this perspective, "Titanic Days" is confirmed as an album in the purest Kirsty MacColl style, yet it sounds profoundly different from the rest of her production: less eclectic, less dreamy than the masterpiece "Electric Landlady" that preceded it. "Titanic Days" arrives at a crucial moment in Kirsty's life, where a fully realized artistic and authorial maturity coincides with a very difficult personal period. The end of her marriage with Steve Lillywhite has deep repercussions on the album, and like all traumas, it inevitably brings back other ghosts from the past, particularly the still recent death of her father Ewan. Demonstrating great character and inner strength, Kirsty chooses not only to vent but, above all, to react, to hold her spine straight and her head high, to look all her fragilities, her problems, and the people who have disappointed her in the eyes, and to muster the strength to take control of her life once more. "Titanic Days" is a perfect chronicle of that intense and difficult moment, a strikingly autobiographical and self-referential album, disillusioned, angry, even sarcastic at times, but where the "old" Kirsty still emerges, that simple, intelligent, ironic, and sensitive woman I've come to know and love in her previous releases. Given these premises, "Titanic Days" can only be her most intensely personal, poignant, and liberating album, candid and direct as always.
Perhaps it is just a personal observation influenced by my feelings, but in my opinion, "Titanic Days" is an album where it is very difficult not to identify, if not entirely, at least in some sections: the songs on the album speak of something true and simple, emotions and situations that practically everyone has encountered in their life, the need to have someone by your side, the regrets of a relationship gone wrong, the thrill of a fleeting adventure, the impulse to escape into one's dreams and the desire to start anew. Kirsty leaves nothing between the lines, she expresses herself without beating around the bush, from "You'll never stop running, it's like waiting for Christmas again, it's all lost in the blink of an eye" to "I've been an awful woman for all my life, a dreadful daughter and a hopeless wife, and I've had my eyes on that carving knife" the album is full of outbursts and jabs, the bitterness of a strong woman who chooses to explode, with tremendous self-control and elegance, rather than implode and collapse upon herself.
Musically, the album offers few stable points of reference, as always when talking about Kirsty MacColl, the real common thread is represented by the atmospheres and emotions, which in this case are particularly strong and well-defined, as an obvious consequence of the background on which "Titanic Days" has developed. One of the most iconic episodes of the album is certainly "Bad", with that intense, sensual, and smoothly bitter smoky nightclub atmosphere, which finds its natural confluence in the Latin-flavored blues rock of "Can't Stop Killing You", accompanied by the guitar of her friend Johnny Marr. In "Big Boy On A Saturday", an energetic and captivating anti-stupidity and superficiality anthem, power pop sounds with r'n'r reminiscences emerge, but more generally "Titanic Days" is also remembered as Kirsty's most electronic album, from the ecstatic new age chant of "Angel" to a melancholic ballad like "Don't Go Home", but above all the emotional melancholy of an epic title track and the bitter twilight disillusionment of "Tomorrow Never Comes", a sad but wonderful conclusion.
Nonetheless, the more folk side of Kirsty, which formed the backbone of "Electric Landlady," is not forgotten, and although significantly downsized, it manages to express itself in "You Know It's You", which as the first song in the lineup may seem slightly subdued but perfectly introduces the listener to the fragile emotional equilibrium on which the album unfolds, and especially two great highlights of "Titanic Days," the light, gentle and melancholic acoustic ballad "Last Day Of Summer", a masterpiece of melodic simplicity made even more splendid by Kirsty's unique voice and the most famous song of the album, "Soho Square", a symbol destined to remain forever associated with her memory, "One day I'll be waiting there, no empty bench in Soho Square", words of a girl who will never lose hope and the desire to live, engraved on a bench in the well-known London square, her monument that is not a statue but a simple and representative object, as she herself has never ceased to be.
From a more down-to-earth and strictly musical perspective, I cannot say that "Titanic Days" is her best album, and I would be shamelessly lying if I said that the Kirsty MacColl of episodes like "Angel", "Don't Go Home", and "Just Woke Up" is my favorite Kirsty, let's say that amidst marvelous and iconic songs, there are also some slightly weak episodes. This is certainly not the most suitable album for a first approach to her music and her personality, but for those who truly intend to know her, it becomes an essential and indispensable passage. "Titanic Days" is a slice of lived life even before an album, its sincerity, its high emotional value inevitably overshadow any other kind of judgment, so it must be for an album born from the heart and only much later, from reason.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Soho Square (04:25)
(Kirsty MacColl/Mark E. Nevin)
Your name froze on the winter air
An empty bench in Soho Square
Forgotten now I turn away
Just save me for a rainy day
But don't be sorry
I don't want to hear it baby
My feet froze in the winter chill
I knew I'd probably get ill
But I was praying we could fill
An empty bench and still
You're so sorry
But I don't want your pity baby
It's all yours now please don't tease
The pigeons shiver in the naked trees
And I'll do anything but
Please don't hurt me
Just kiss me quick
'Cos it's my birthday
And I feel so small
I don't know why
But no I'm not too old to cry
An empty bench in Soho Square
If you'd have come you'd have found me there
But you never did 'cos you don't care
And I'm so sorry baby
I don't mind loneliness too much
But when I met you I was touched
And that was good enough for me
But do we always have to be sorry
Why can't we just be happy baby?
One day you'll be waiting there
No empty bench in Soho Square
And we'll dance around like we don't care
And I'll be much too old to cry
And you'll kiss me quick in case I die
Before my birthday
One day you'll be waving there
No empty bench in Soho Square
No I don't know the reason why
I'll love you till the day I die
But one day you'll be waiting there
Come summertime in Soho Square
And I'll be painting stars up in the sky
Before I get too old to cry
Before my birthday
I hope I see those pigeons fly
Before my birthday
In Soho Square on my birthday
03 Angel (05:10)
(Kirsty MacColl)
Love's dreaming
Love's sleeping
And when it wakes again who knows
The company it's keeping
I am dreaming
I am falling
And just before I hit the ground I hear you calling
There's an angel
Floating round my house
Floating round my house
There's an angel
Floating round this house
Still dreaming
I am flying
And far above my room
I thought I heard you crying
I am calling
Come with me
Come on in and take me by the hand
Come give me what I understand
There's an angel
Floating round my house
Floating round my house
There's an angel
Floating round this house
Love's dreaming
Love's sleeping
And when it wakes again who knows
The company it's keeping
I am dreaming
I am falling
And just before I hit the ground
I hear you calling
There's an angel
Floating round my house
Floating round my house
There's an angel
Floating round this house
There's an angel
Floating round my house
Floating round my heart
There's an angel
Floating round this house
Floating round this heart
Round this head
05 Bad (02:45)
(Kirsty MacColl)
I've been the token woman all my life
The token daughter and the token wife
Now I collected tokens one by one
'Til I've saved enough to buy a gun
Now you can't get even but you can get mad
And it's not funny no and it's not sad
It's just a feeling that I've always had
Oh Look out world I'm about to be bad
I want a brief encounter in a stolen car
A hand on my buttock in a Spanish bar
I want to meet the man who wants to go too far
For a token of my affection
I want to taste excitement
Smell the danger
Get swept off my feet by the perfect stranger
I want to try something that I've never had
Oh look out world I'm about to be bad
I've been an awful woman all my life
A dreadful daughter and a hopeless wife
And I've had my eye on that carving knife
Oh you've been lucky so far
I'm not crazy no I'm just mad
I don't want to be sorry
No I want to be glad
It's just a feeling inside that I have always had
So look out world I'm about to be bad
06 Can't Stop Killing You (04:10)
(Kirsty MacColl/Johnny Marr)
He blew into town like a paper sack
In a stolen car with a shotgun in the back he said
She can't run now, she can't hide
I'm gonna get her back for her lies lies lies
He taught her how to pout
And he taught her how to tease
And he taught her how to beg
When she fell down to her knees he said
Your face is different
But you're really all the same
I have to teach you a lesson again and again
See I feel no pleasure
And I feel no pain
So what else can I do?
I can't stop killing you
When you're out there in the dark
I'll come rushing through your brain
When you wake up in the morning
I'll be coursing through your veins
When you're swimming in the water
I'm the hand that drags you under
I'm the lightning that strikes you
Just before you hear the thunder
I can't stop killing you
Well she woke up in the bathroom
With her face upon the floor
She said I don't know what I'm doing here
But I've been here before
And the fixit man had fixed her
'Cos he's such a little Hitler
And he loves the feel of power
That she gives him through her terror
I can't stop killing you
Well she looked into the mirror
And she smoked her cigarette
And she wondered where she'd go now
To find a place she could forget
All the things he said he'd do
I can't stop killing you
When you're out there in the dark
I'll come rushing through your brain
When you wake up in the morning
I'll be coursing through your veins
When you're swimming in the water
I'm the hand that drags you under
I'm the lightning that strikes you
Just before you hear the thunder
I can't stop killing you
11 Tomorrow Never Comes (04:46)
(Kirsty MacColl/Mark E. Nevin)
I watch you lie asleep
Watch you breathing
And as you fall and rise
Like the tears in my eyes
I know you'll be leaving
I've earned all the pain
I suppose it was worth it
I'd do it again but I just couldn't face it
And if I see you again
You won't be the person I knew
I look to the future and see
A thousand setting suns
But tomorrow never comes
I still watch from my window
To see if you're coming
But I know in my heart
There's really no chance
You'll never stop running
It's like waiting for Xmas again
It's all lost in the blink of an eye
And about all the pain
Well you know it was worth it
You could do it again but I just don't deserve it
Let us part in the rain so the clouds hide
The despair and the sorrow I feel on the inside
And let my tears dry
In the light of a setting sun
And tomorrow never comes
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