THE SLOWEST CLOCK: “Life Still” (Bewildered Records)

WHEN THE Underground was running in Dame Street, I used to go there a lot. The Slowest Clock were regular giggers, and most people expected them to do something. Ah, but it’s strange the fate that befalls so many bands, and The Slowest Clock are no more.

It is an intelligent, carefully crafted album with lyrics that are well above the ordinary. Life Still is about relationships, and about the never-ending search for the reason and purpose of living. The songs manage to deal sensitively and intelligently with such weighty subject matter. The playing – angles of Television in it – of Dave Burke, Gerry Fahy and Brian Nevyn is precise, electric and understated. The singing of Frank Price has a simple authenticity about it, while the lyrics delve for meaning.

“What’s in life I ask myself?/My head is full of such non-sense,” he observes on ‘Wasted’. As far as love affairs go, there is a predominant feeling of never having what you want. “Can pay for sex in my town, but not the girl I want/If she could lie here, now that would be a show,” Price sings on ‘You Never See Me’. I have to admit that I have a soft spot for songs about Andy Warhol and Lou Reed. ‘Warhol’ knows it subject well – plenty of late nights listening to the Banana album methinks: “Silver to silver, silver to gold/Reproducing clones of Marilyn Monroe/Peeling the couch revealing young Reed/The icon weighs in on scales of speed.”

The Slowest Clock are no more, though Life Still should see that somebody else out there remembers them. I know I will.

• Gerry McGovern