Request: TELEVISION PERSONALITIES - The Painted Word

LP Illuminated Records 1984
CD reissue Fire records 2002



"For some people - even those who didn't live through it - one crucial cultural era or another remains paramount, the fountainhead to which all subsequent existence must pay tribute. London singer/guitarist Daniel Treacy evidently considers the pop-art/mod '60s all there is to life; via the Television Personalities - the eccentric, haphazard group that has lobbed his brilliant salvos of vulnerable, adenoidal, damaged genius into the pop world for three decades now - Treacy has fashioned himself the voice of a long-lost young generation. While he draws heavily on mid-'60s pop and psychedelia (to the point of covering songs by the Creation on They Could Have Been Bigger Than the Beatles and in concert), Treacy doesn't seek to re-create a sound so much as honor a culture. A tender, detached, often wounded romantic with a mighty knowledge of his stylistic forebears, Treacy writes and sings with even more Britishness than Ray Davies. (...) Treacy formed the band with schoolmate Edward Ball (also the man of the Times, to which he became singly loyal in the early '80s) and Joe Foster (later of Slaughter Joe) as a haphazard and amateurish band whose records offer no slick musicianship but loads of brilliantly adapted pop-art weirdness. They started out wide-eyed and Jonathan Richman-like but evolved into (and beyond) rambling, jagged space noise and various stripes of time-warped psychedelia. (...) The Painted Word lists a four-man lineup and actually features a group photo (albeit a dark, fuzzy one) on the front cover. Musically, the TVPs have drifted off into spare, droning psychedelia and ultra-restrained rock that's hauntingly beautiful, like the most delicate moments of the Velvet Underground. While less resonantly topical than before (save for Back to Vietnam), the all-original songs effectively convey a melancholic sense of futility, even when superficially addressing relatively jolly topics. Highlighted by Stop and Smell the Roses and the heartbreaking romantic yearning of Someone to Share My Life With, The Painted Word is surprisingly serious and altogether excellent".
(Ira Robbins, Trouser Press)

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Someone To Share My Life With