Back in June Carmie was singing about ‘Things I no longer do’ as she flew back into the nest with mum and dad after breaking up with her boyfriend.
But she added into the mix things she found that she could now do and enjoyed doing, indeed she celebrated them, like drinking red wine, dancing on her own and “cooking up a future” without the ex beau.
Now she’s taken things a stage further in ‘Cigarettes and shots’ with a thorough examination of the drinking habits of Denmark’s youth which amount to a fair bit more than an occasional small glass of red wine, without dancing around the subject if you’ll pardon the pun.
And she admits to taking to drink herself at times in order to ward off life’s little pressures while bemoaning the fact that Denmark isn’t known for something other than its drinking habits (and little mermaids, and bacon).
Well if you will keep insisting it is probably the best lager in the word. C’mon, man. Try a pint of Holts Bitter; that will put you on the straight and narrow road to abstinence forever.
I can’t figure where cigarettes come into it, I didn’t realise that you could escape from anything by way of a crafty ciggie behind the bike sheds. Unless of course you’re smoking the wacky baccy.
I said in the previous review that Carmie can sing pretty damn well and ‘Cigarettes and shots’ only serves to emphasise that axiom even more. She sounds like she could be a nurse in the rehab unit, the one with the perfect bedside manner.
It’s a cleverly constructed song in that it is melodic and quite pacey, upbeat and jaunty considering the gravitas of the subject matter but then at the end it gets all fuzzy in the guitar section and then there’s a sudden stop as if someone’s collapsed, that last pint having proved to be a bridge too far.
Actually, if you listen to the lyrics closely it seems that she isn’t decrying the drinking habits of the general population quite so much as those of her ex, the one who was central to ‘Things I no longer do’.
At least that’s the way I interpret lyrics like:
“Your eyes are red, your skin is pale/ Cigarettes and shots to forget your name/I don’t recognise you no more/ This is not the man I knew before/Cigarettes and shots , are you okay?”
And then,
“You needed someone to believe in you/ To see it through/ You need to know that I ain’t leaving”
This suggests to me she’s back with the guy she parted company with in the previous song having been evicted by the parents and he’s really hit the bottle hard as a result…
“Cigarettes and shots to kill the pain/ Running out of love, are you still the same?/ You hide behind a lie and fake a smile/ Cigarettes and shots, is it too late?”
Meanwhile, and I remarked on her quirky lines last time, “You’re off your face, in outer space” is pure genius.
Stay tuned for the next installment of Aarhus’ version of Coronation Street! There’s an EP on its way. For now, ‘Cigarettes & Shots’ is out on 29th September.
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