Only CDs Is Sounding Like These # 15: The La’s, The La’s (1990)

A new occasional series - CDs are coming back baby! And I’m here for it. BIGTIME! Also, some albums just REALLY suit the format, right

The La’s were a British band that was around for a decade, released one album, really only had one song and sorta imploded really, as lead-man Lee Mavers seemed just too hard to deal with all up, and was mildly schizophrenic in his musical tastes and style. Everyone know There She Goes Again, even if you didn’t know who sang it. It was one of those perfect late 80s/early 90s type of songs that floated around for a half decade in the consciousness (or more) and sounded so sixties as for many to just assume it was an obscure cover.

I count close to a dozen compilations from this band that only released one album.

I owned it on cassette tape, and briefly on vinyl. I owned it a couple of times on CD — and once bought a deluxe edition with the best of the off-cuts and BBC sessions and things. But I never played those extras. Not more than once or twice.

What mattered most was the album. Unlocking this record felt like one of those great musical secret pathways. Everyone knows the single. But you know the album. And you’re sure there’s gold in them there hills. You report back with your findings. And no one cares. At least not significantly.

The La’s missed their window by a half-decade. They are probably my favourite “Britpop” group but they were there before there was any such thing as an Oasis, let alone a war with Blur.

Let’s address this elephant in that room: There She Goes remains fantastic. It’s basically just a chorus, repeated ad-nauseam. It rides along on a guitar line R.E.M. borrowed from Johnny Marr, who in turn had purloined it from The Byrds. It references both the title of and the mood of more than one Velvet Underground song — and if many chose to hear it as a simple sweet love song, it’s not hard to hear that love song as being a dedication to heroin. Again, they weren’t the first to do it (Velvet Underground) and everyone was doing it for a time, even down here in New Zealand (Hello Sailor, Blue Lady) but, yeah, pretty obvious when you pause/rewind/pause and hand-transcribe the lyrics as was the fashion at the time:

There she goes
There she goes again
Racing through my brain
And I just can't contain
This feelin' that remains

I also loved this song, this band, this album, this mood, because it was used in one of my favourite Mike Myers films, actually the best Mike Myers movie (apart from the Halloween franchise, lol). That being SoI Married An Axe Murderer. Excellent movie. (Oops, that’s Mike Myers Movie Catchphrase infringement, or displacement, right there).

It’s popped up in other movies, and the album was on compilations of the Various Artists nature too. A perennial one-hit-wonder but also not a lucrative, set you up for life kinda one-hit-wonder. So it musta pissed off the band somewhat.

They eventually called it a day. Lee threatens to make new music, turns up now and then on stage for some shambolic-y renditions of this, in that self-loathing sort of dig-deep way. And those that know about the album know. But really it is a gem. Every song is different. You can’t quite locate any one consistent band throughout, but you can easily spot the gifted work of a great songwriter; a student of all the right bands, making his brand of “Record Collection Pop”.

Recently, someone gifted me a bunch of CDs — told me to biff what I didn’t want, keep what I loved, have a dig, etc. I’m still working through some of them. But the immediate find for me was the original single-disc self-titled album by The La’s. And I’ve played it a bunch this year. Every song is interesting, if not a winner. And it reminds me of 30 years ago. Which is not something I always want of course. But in this case I’ll absolutely allow it.

Some things work on a particular format, and in a particular way. You don’t want bells and whistles, because a band like this was never about that. I love that there’s just one original album by them. It’s all I need. It’s all they planned to release. It’s all anyone should ever want.