https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIBbNEFOSpY
In one of my favorite Doctor Who stories, "the Empty Child/ the Doctor Dances" (set in WWII Blitz-era England), Christopher Eccleston's Doctor realizes that a teenage girl he's interacted with has been using the air-raid sirens as a chance to lead a group of younger homeless children into suddenly-abandoned houses to eat the food off the table of well-off Britishers while the residents are hiding from the bombs. She asks if he plans to stop her; he replies "It's brilliant! I'm not sure if it's Marxism in action or a West End musical."
Dowling Poole's "Empires, Buildings, and Acquisitions" is the sound of refusing to choose one over the other. It's an angular, surging, many-segmented pop song centered on squatters' pride. I generally compare Dowling Poole to XTC (or to Of Montreal's Hissing Fauna/ Skeletal Lamping era), and that's a strong comparison here, although it might leave you surprised by the humming and country banjo of the opening or the barroom piano that sneaks in later. Those, the "West End musical" bits, are products of the setting, I figure: communal campfire party resistance for a place where "The point's conceded/ We’ve a little bit less than needed/ But all in all the roof is sound/ the walls can hold a tune/ And we’re happy where we are".
It's a jollity to be placed against "Black heart, Midas fingers/ and he strides the world with a smell that lingers/ And he won’t back down and he won’t be broken/ And he’ll shut your mouth if you’re outspoken/ And he won’t come to discuss/ He’ll shoot you from a distance with a blunderbuss/ And all the while the country gents discreetly turn away". Like the Kinks doing a Marxist critique of their Village Green Preservation Society, basically.
The Kinks were very fine pop band and chronicler of daily life who didn't quite end up admitted into my favorite songs countdown. You can see it as a flaw in me that I, a legally-certified homeowner, can't relate to their gently loving critiques of the Village as much as I do to the perspective of people I'll give a dollar (one shiny dollar! A life-changing dollar!) to if I pass them on the street. I won't argue the point.
On the other hand, Kinks songs usually had one good chorus each; "Empires, Buildings, and Acquisitions" has at least two different ones. Plus it's very hard to make me like banjos; Kermit the Frog managed it in 1979, and here's one of the few acts to do it since, even for a few seconds. A few seconds was probably the right dose. Full points to Dowling Poole, now two albums into what looks like it could be a superb career, for thinking of it.
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