“Skinner’s song presents a warts-and-all depiction of his character (or persona, whatever you prefer) and a moment of direct insight into his emotional core.”
This is a really good album. If you have the chance to check them out, don’t pass it up. Listen a few times before you make your decision.
“Dry Your Eyes” – The Streets
(Words/music: Mike Skinner, available on A Grand Don’t Come for Free, Vice Records 2004)Melody is not one of Mike Skinner’s gifts; his albums (or at least his first two, I kind of lost track of him after A Grand Don’t Come for Free) feature clever word play, a sharp wit, and the best of what the low-fi UK hip hop “garage” movement. To put it one way – Skinner’s albums push his eccentricities out into the forefront – some are charmed by his quick, accented tongue and his minimal beats while others find him smarmy, boorish, or annoying. There’s something to be said about inspiring strong reactions in listeners – at least being hated means that you’re getting people to think about you.
Beneath all of Skinner’s take-it-or-leave-it eccentricities lay the eyes of the storyteller. His albums, in particular the full length narrative in A Grand Don’t Come for Free, draw on the same “man on the street” observations that the poet Charles Baudelaire cultivated in the nineteenth century. Like Baudelaire’s prose poems, Skinner’s songs take in all of the details of living in a city (as filtered through his somewhat hedonistic twenty-something demeanor). It’s almost like Skinner’s narrating the movie of his life – taking in as many details and presenting it to his audience. When Skinner shifts the focus to himself – turning his focus away from the city and towards himself (or rather, his narrator at least) – he maintains the same descriptive manner. On “Dry Your Eyes,” Skinner’s narrative laments the end of a crumbling relationship by describing the gamut of emotions experienced – confusion, frustration, longing, and ultimately acceptance. More than at any point on the album, Skinner sounds sincere; he still makes a couple good puns but they don’t seem forced – just the logical expression of his heartbreak. Even when he sings the hook in his amateur-hour voice (thank god he hadn’t found Autotune), it works well as the melodic manifestation of his conscience; if he brought in someone with better pipes to sing the hook it might sound too polished and sterile. Instead, Skinner’s song presents a warts-and-all depiction of his character (or persona, whatever you prefer) and a moment of direct insight into his emotional core.
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