Relentlessly highbrow - Luke Haines

Last FM

Relentlessly highbrow, Haines’s dark-but-mischievous lyrics typically fall into three groups: musings on obscure Anglicana (The Mitford Sisters, Freddie Mills is Dead), bitter attacks on modern society, particularly the arts (The Death of Sarah Lucas, Christ) and twisted 1970s anti-nostalgia (Leeds United, Here’s to Old England) - with the odd dash of self-aggrandisement thrown in for good measure.

I like this - a lot. Haines has played at book signings for David Peace who was promoting The Damned United, a book on Brian Clough's brief tenure at Leeds United in the 1970s. Leeds United relates to this, and with the reference to the Yorkshire Ripper, to Peace's earlier Yorkshire/Red Riding Quartet. The refrain "The North! The North!" advances on the earlier Auteurs track The South Will Rise Again, itself a response to The N.W.R.A. by The Fall. The phrase "The North! The North! Where we do what we want! The North! The North! Where we do what we like" is also a quote from a character in the Red Riding Quartet.