The La's - The La's (1990)

The La's - The La's (1990)

Rating: 7.1

My second review and after Mozart and 1791 I return back to the present day, relatively.  Well, over twenty years ago.  But I also return from old Austria and to my beloved, fascinating hometown of Liverpool, England, for a little rock album called The La's, by The La's.

In case you did not know, "La'" is a Liverpudlian, or "scouse" term, short for lad, which all lads, or la's, call each other.  Around the city, it is often found at the end of every other sentence spoken, an unnecessary but affectionate term that punctuates dialogue between men. The point of me telling you this is that this album, this band, The La's is very localised music of a certain time and place.

While Mozart's 'Requiem' is eternal and Godly music, The La's is distinctly late eighties, early nineties northern England.  The coming end of Thatcherism, prolonged for a few years by John Major, and the rise of New Labour.  A country falling to pieces, an empire crumbling, leaving antiquated relics of a forgotten era, scattered evidence of former glory across the world. But spirits are high - especially in Liverpool, for at least the red half of the city, as Liverpool F.C. had just come off the back of two decades of dominance in football, winning their final league trophy til this very day in 1990, the same The La's self-titled debut came out.

The beautiful streets of Liverpool I grew up in, and its optimistic people.  A people so detached from the rest of British customs and culture, and quaintly so.  Liverpool and its red pride, not only in a footballing sense, but the communist undertones of the city's collective ideology.  The c-word isn't a dirty word in Liverpool (neither is the other c-word, too much), and strangely of all the cities in England for my family to find salvation from the former Soviet Union, Liverpool was the one they chose.  At least they fit in with the people, walking contradictions - but delightfully so.  And though I speak as if I am looking from the outside, I am scouser at heart.  To bastardise a local phrase - I'm scouse, not English.. not Russian.

The La's, more than any other band including The Beatles, represent what the city of Liverpool means to me.  The Beatles were from another time and another generation, another place altogether, their accents incongruous to the Liverpool I know.  John, Paul, George and Ringo certainly would not have called each other La' with a missing d.  Perhaps lad.  To me, The La's is the real Penny Lane, a bleak street, the one that comes off Allerton Road on the way into town, the turn-off near the old church.  The La's are my mum calling me in for tea while I'm playing footy on the streets with my mates, growing up and watching my beloved Liverpool F.C fall further behind Man United every season in the Premier League.

The music is jangling guitars and trackies, channeled sea shanties of a bygone period, a time when Liverpool was one of the world's major ports, it's docks bustling with life.  A gentle, friendly and timely sound with a hint of scouse eccentricity and madness in the playful, sometimes surreal and probably drug-addled lyrics of Lee Mavers.  Music that paints a picture of my childhood, memories reflected, but not that I listened to growing up.

And so it leads me to the question, how and why should I rate this album?  Who am I to judge?  As there is only one judge for us after all, which is God.  I gave it a "7.1", but what does that mean - the album is only 71% perfect?  Music, that as I have stated, is reflective of my beautiful childhood, of fond memories and of a glorious life I have lived thanks to the Lord.  Only worth a 7.1?  What does it even mean, exactly?

As I stated in my Mozart review, I believe there is an objective standard for art, but should all art be reaching for that pinnacle?  The La's is timely and local music, and save for serving as a historical document one day in the future, an artifact of another lost era in time, it has its own use-by date.  So why put a 7.1 rating on it?  I don't know why exactly, but there's more money in it.  People just like to put things in order.