The short hairs still stand on end…
(No jokes from you in the peanut gallery about “short hairs being all you’ve got, mate!)
For no reason except that thanks to the kindness of another, I received both of Euros Childs’ solo albums today, I also went back and listened to some of my favorite tracks from Euros’s old band, the too-wonderful-for-any-rational description Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci. I love that band (loved, I suppose, now that they’ve been broken up for a couple of years) and the fact that they were so happy to sing songs about dancing with the pet dog, or about freckles, or about girls doing each other’s hair…and willing to sing those songs frequently in Welsh, a language that seems about as easy to parse as ancient aramaic.
But again, not the point. What the point here is, there’s a song from the Gorks 1999 album called “Humming Song”. Opening with Euros Childs’ gorgeous, sweet tenor vocals and an impossibly fragile melody, the song proceeds through two verses and a sort of chorus thing….
…and then there’s a final coda. And Euros’s sister Megan comes elbowing in on fiddle, and Euros bangs the crap out of his piano, and Richard James plays a gorgeous meandering guitar solo and the bass and drums come up in perfect sync and the last minute or so of “Humming Song” might be my favorite recording of a band playing an instrumental section of a song, ever. It gives me goosebumps, still, maybe after hearing it a couple thousand times.
Oh, and while we’re at it, here’s why those of us who love Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci love ’em so much: “Iechyd Da”, which is basically a Welsh drinking song. Watching this vid makes me want to hoist one of those giant bottles of Double Dragon Ale and wave that flag of Wales around, too….
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Popnarcotic 
stephan bayley said,
July 25, 2007 at 5:18 am
Thanks for the commentary on the last song from my favorite Gorky’s album, Spanish Dance Troupe. Euros Childs is my current favorite singer-songwriter on planet earth, though rumors persist that that’s not really where he’s from.Glad to know that others are as moved by his/their stuff as myself… ps–I have a live bootleg of theirs from April of 2000 I’d copy for you if interested