Terry – I’m Terry LP Upset the Rhythm (UK)

LP version. “I’m going to set ‘Carpe Diem’, the first track on Terry‘s new album I’m Terry as my alarm for the next week and see how that makes me feel. It will be replacing an alternation of ‘Werewolves of London’ and ‘Baby, It’s You’. After a week the familiarity might feel kind of insane but kind of nice. Terry is into repetition. Terry often feels like the daily grind set inside a Looney Tune. They can be nasty and violent, but funny at the same time. I laugh at Terry riffs a lot. The lyrics are droll, but have you heard the riffs? It’s like they’re tickling you. But this is all part of a plan; I would almost say that Terry is highly conceptual, possibly the most conceptual band I’ve been around. What’s really going on here? Why am I listening to jingles and feeling so moved? My favorite songs on I’m Terry— the band’s third record in three years, following on from Terry HQ (UTR 084CD/LP, 2016) and Remember Terry (UTR097CD/LP, 2017) — are ‘Under Reign’, sandwiched between other new favorites ‘The Whip’ and ‘Crimes’. There’s a theme of dominance and submission here, but unremarkable and ignorable, like knowing you’re enslaved by your streaming service but putting that out of your mind for another week. Terry is domesticity; Terry romances the mundane. This is how romance triumphs. That’s what Billy Bragg‘s ‘A New England’ and Squeeze‘s ‘Up The Junction’ do. Terry’s suburban escapism moment is ‘Ciao Goodbye’; Listen to it on an arterial road under the yellow streetlights of a weeknight. Terry has never been this beautiful, and Terry may never be beautiful again, definitely not on this record. That’s what I like about Terry, there are few rules. They seem to make a song out of whatever sounds good to them; they aren’t a genre study. Have you noticed the reggae undercurrent in Terry? There is one; Terry are like Steely Dan or 10cc. Both bands make me queasy after a certain point. Terry probably also make me a bit queasy, singing about police beatings and nationalism and all that, but they’re not out to hurt you. They’re like the kindly bearer of bad news. I’m pretty certain Terry isn’t perverse; they’re just the harbinger of the encroaching perverse world.” —Lee Parker, 2018

I’m Terry by Terry