World Party 'Is It Like Today?'

Chart Peak: 19
YouTube

Karl Wallinger formed Would Party back in 1985 - he is a multi-instrumentalist, former member of the Waterboys and a former music director of the Rocky Horror Show... 'Is It Like Today?' was released on 29th March 1993.

For a long time, I thought the only World Party song I knew was 'Put The Message In The Box', which I remembered hearing a lot on the radio. At the end of the century Robbie Williams of course had a big hit with his cover of 'She's The One' and I think it was around the time that I was able to connect my knowledge that World Party had their only Top 20 (or even Top 30) hit with a song called 'Is It Like Today?' to the song that I'd heard quite a few times without really noticing the title.
It's sort of tempting to dislike this song because it has a slightly self-important quality (it is, after all, written from the perspective of God) and has a slightly fussy pristine sound about it. And yet there's a wisdom that seems to make me like it almost despite myself, and despite my slight squeamishness about the lyric "Blood just looks the same when you open the vein" and the clumsy "he went to the the moon" line. And the melody is very good, in an obviously Beatlesque way;  the group's then-bassist David Catlin-Birch was also a member of long-running tribute The Bootleg Beatles, which probably explains his performance in the video. It doesn't explain why the video is for the slightly overlong album version instead of the single edit though.

Available on: Bang!

World Party 'Way Down Now'

Chart Peak: UK 66
YouTube

After three UK chart-toppers, it was probably about time we got a song that wasn't a big hit here, though I for one wasn't expecting to be by a Welshman. This was the second British single from the second album by Karl Wallinger's post-Waterboys project and the follow-up to the big radio hit 'Message In The Box', though in the US this one came out first and performed better, topping the (airplay-based) Modern Rock Tracks chart for five weeks.

People don't seem to talk much about the Caring Nineties now, but it was the buzz phrase around the turn of the decade and some of the music recorded early on seemed to be reflecting that sort of mood. Accordingly the Goodbye Jumbo album is supposed to trace a protagonist's journey toward spiritual fulfillment, though this particular track is early in the sequence and so our man is fearful in the lyric, though the music is more rousing in tone as he seeks some sort of enlightenment. You can imagine this going down well at the time, though British people were never that keen to actually buy World Party singles and stayed away in their droves. Out of context it doesn't wholly convince now, though I will at least trust that the quote from 'Sympathy For The Devil' near the end is in a spirit of homage rather than plagiarism.

Available on: Goodbye Jumbo