I must have been about 12 when I was at my gran’s.
Her phone bill came, and she says to me: “these itemised phone bills are great, you can see who you rang and how much it cost. Your mum has changed to one.” Those were, honestly, the most chilling words I’d heard up to that point. I knew what I’d rang when Mum and dad were out, and now they did too. For modern equivalence imagine you are the same age and your mum has found the camera roll on your iPhone, ‘nuff said?
Anyway, we are the people that Adam Weiner, the man behind Low Cut Connie writes for. The perverts, the freaks, the socially awkward. In other words, nearly everyone on the planet, then.
The title track takes a look behind the closed doors too. “Are you scandalised, by what we do in our private lives?” it asks, but the interesting thing is what it asks over, as it were.
See, that one is a 70s sounding thing, and the next one “Help Me” is a kind of disco tune. There’s a bit of funkiness here, certainly.
I probably should point out that “Private Lives” is a double album. That’s the sort of thing normal reviewers put at the start of their work instead of stories about sex lines, and I should also say that over the course of the 17 songs there are 30 odd musicians and that in the three years it took to make, Adam Weiner had to overcome some serious mental issues.
The result is suitably sprawling and incredibly brave. From the piano vignette of “Run To Me Darlin’” which tells a very odd story in a very odd way, to the rock n roll of “Take A Little Ride” its all here. And its all very, very good.
You can see, certainly, why the likes of Elton John have namechecked Connie. And, on “Wild Ride” you get the same type of vibe as you might on X-Ambassadors at their most claustrophobic.
What sets this apart though – and makes it so damn interesting for someone like me who is possessed with the attention span of my little niece, is that rather like the maverick striker for your favourite football team (I am thinking Ricardo Fuller, you can pick who you like) you never truly know where this is going next. “If I Die” is a southern rocker, “It Don’t Take A Genius” has a kind of nightmarish quality, and “Look What They Did” is fragile, piano based stuff dealing with capitalism in the modern era, with the line “Donald Trump made half a billion, what have we got to show?” but whatever it does, it is shot through with class – and never sounds out of place.
There’s even a punky one. Or at the very least, something close to The Replacements with “Tea Time” and the bluesy “The Fuckin’ You Get For The Fuckin’ You Got” has something of the modern Joe Bonamassa (and I’d pay good money to watch him do it at the Albert Hall, to be honest!)
It’s a feature of the record that its not over long. The pulsing “Charyse” is one of the longest at almost five minutes, “Nobody Else Will” gets in the honky tonk for 90 odd seconds, and by this time you aren’t surprised. Likewise on “What Has Happened To Me” which evokes something a little primal, possibly a little John Lennon.
The piano is the key driver throughout this collection it seems to me. “Let’s All Hang Out Tonite” is washed in it, and the laid back tone is perhaps why LCC got on a Barack Obama summer playlist in 2015 and got to visit the White House. Maybe Joe Biden will have a listen to the Springsteen-ish “Stay As Long As You Like” and have him back?
A tough record to sum up, to be honest. But one that’s best described as this: If you have no interest in genres and boxes then you can let Low Cut Connie take you anywhere. You can do anything you like in the privacy of your own home, after all.
Rating 8.5/10
