In this episode, Dara is considering the merits of low bars. How can you talk about heatwaves when it’s only 18 degrees? Very easily actually, when you live in Ireland! How can you celebrate being the fourth worst team in the league? With the greatest of ease when your team has underachieved so badly for two straight years. But it’s a fine line between understanding the usefulness of lowered expectations and giving in to total complacency and the complete absence of any standards at all.
Dara tries to shoehorn the low bar measure into two romantic films he recently watched – The Remains of the Day (1993) and Crossing Delancey (1988). The former is a period drama of almost unbearable emotional repression and suppressed longing, the latter a de facto period piece by virtue of being set in 80s New York. Neither film is flawless – in one there is no climax, only loss and regret; in the other a consummation that is barely worth the wait – but they are well written and acted, and don’t call unnecessary attention to themselves.
What does call attention to itself is the soundtrack of Crossing Delancey, which consists of some appalling 80s compositions by The Roches, a vocal group from New Jersey whose members were three sisters that came up in the 70s folk scene. Could that be the same band that recorded the beautiful Hammond Song less than a decade earlier? And what did Paul Simon do to inspire that superior work?
Oh, and happy 5th birthday to the pod! Toot-toot!
Hot Press 2019 article on The Roches: https://www.hotpress.com/music/secret-story-roches-happened-critically-acclaimed-folk-group-22792416