Phil Lynott has totally blown it again, and he knows it—but he has to hope or be consumed. Running Back takes its strength from heart-wrenching ambiguity, and borrows an old trick from the country music playbook: back the words of an abandoned sad sack with an almost obscenely cheerful instrumental, and thus pull the listener in opposite directions at once. An ascending chord progression, accompanied by a bouncy, almost innocent line from the electric piano, strikes the right balance between high spirited naivete and cutesy sentiment. The lyrics, meanwhile, alternate between mopey acceptance and mopey denial—is it not over because there's still the pain, or is it not over because there's still a chance?—but it's a charming mopeyness. Here's a cocky scoundrel who's been legitimately wounded and we feel for him as he struggles to cope. Even the lead guitar can't decide at first what it wants to say before finally gushing forth with a tightly syncopated torrent of notes. Lynott might want us to think he's just fishing for pity, peeking out behind his sad mask to see if we've bought his sob story while his compatriot casually rips up the fretboard, but we know better.Friday, September 25, 2009
999,986: Thin Lizzy — Running Back
Phil Lynott has totally blown it again, and he knows it—but he has to hope or be consumed. Running Back takes its strength from heart-wrenching ambiguity, and borrows an old trick from the country music playbook: back the words of an abandoned sad sack with an almost obscenely cheerful instrumental, and thus pull the listener in opposite directions at once. An ascending chord progression, accompanied by a bouncy, almost innocent line from the electric piano, strikes the right balance between high spirited naivete and cutesy sentiment. The lyrics, meanwhile, alternate between mopey acceptance and mopey denial—is it not over because there's still the pain, or is it not over because there's still a chance?—but it's a charming mopeyness. Here's a cocky scoundrel who's been legitimately wounded and we feel for him as he struggles to cope. Even the lead guitar can't decide at first what it wants to say before finally gushing forth with a tightly syncopated torrent of notes. Lynott might want us to think he's just fishing for pity, peeking out behind his sad mask to see if we've bought his sob story while his compatriot casually rips up the fretboard, but we know better.
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Can I just say that I'm insanely jealous that I didn't get to write this review? Honestly, I would have placed it a bit higher in the rankings, somewhere around 850,000. Drakkar Sauna was covering this live about a year ago and it absolutely slew me. Slew. I put this on all the break-up tapes I've made since I heard it. I'm a sad sack. Sack.
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