Back in The Day™ (1989), everyone compared My Dad Is Dead to Joy Division. Really, every review. Like they couldn’t think of anything else to say, like someone said that once and every other reviewer copied it. (Which is in fact almost certainly precisely how it happened, because everyone did music journalism that way, even on the fanzine level.) I can hear it a bit, but I wasn’t convinced then and I’m not convinced now. Frankly, Interpol and (especially) the Editors recreate the authentic Joy Division sound way more closely (and certainly more fidelitously than Peter Hook and the Light, even if Peter Hook got a reconditioned Arp Omni 2 to tour the Joy Division albums).
I guess it was just a postpunk-deficient time of decade; everyone else was busy lining up the post-hardcore that would become grunge and had no time for this sort of thing. The actual successors, New Order, were off playing Californian stadia and discovering the novelty of making money from this punk rock disco lark.
My Dad Is Dead are pretty good, though, and should be brought out of storage more. The Taller You Are, The Shorter You Get is the album that made an impact back in the day, but the dude recorded a pile more and most are still available. Most of The Taller You Are is on YouTube in pieces; here’s “Boundaries”.
I don’t hear it either, except yeah the singer hits the same kind of old nasal muppet tone in some songs.
I only heard of My Dad is Dead later, because Tsunami covered “Water’s Edge”. (Indie girl rock is where I wound up in the 90s as I sort of fell out of musical currency). I loved that cover but it wasn’t until I could just type a song name into YouTube and find it that I ran into the original. The Tsunami version is a different kind of powerful, the My Dad is Dead version is haunting as heck, especially now with its connection to a vanished time.
The bass a bit too. I mean, if you were told that was an Interpol demo you could believe it.
his music will haunt me for the rest of my life.
his songs are real and cut to the bone, to the core of me.
i couldn’t say that about any other bands, not even bands i dearly love..
that’s the magic of it i suppose, thanks mark, from one of the many fans who rarely poke their heads out of the sand to let you know how much it actually mattered.