I’ve always enjoyed throwing a bit of a spanner in the works or slightly subverting a convention and I’m afraid that my contribution to this great series may be seen as just that but please bear with me, dear reader, as I gently walk you down the path to acknowledging that this clip is indeed a ‘classic’ and even more ‘Americana’. Bombay Bicycle Club were all at school together in Hampstead, University College School as it happens and were taught by a music teacher a Mr Karl Leutfeld who later in life ended up having the misfortune of being a colleague of mine. Not his fault and I think he escaped unscathed. Back to the band. They graduated and became a very popular indie combo skirting the edges of hipness and selling very well but not in any way troubling the pages of this website or indeed my record collection. However when bands are asked to present covers then, as listeners, we begin to see their influences and roots and with this one performance the Bombay Bicycle Club create such a moving rendition of Loudon Wainwright’s ‘Motel Blues’ it is almost the equal of that plaintive cry from the roads of the USA as Loudon moved from city to city playing gigs and fighting loneliness. Is it the guitar chords or wracked quivery voice or the fact that the band contribute nothing other than looking slightly left out. I defy you not to feel a pang of melancholy.
