Clandestine Classic LVII - You Can Talk To Me

The fifty-seventh post in an occasional series that is intended to highlight songs that you might not have heard that I think are excellent - clandestine classics, if you will. Maybe they'll be by bands you've never heard of. Maybe they'll be by more familiar artists, but tracks that were squirelled away on b-sides, unpopular albums, radio sessions or music magazine cover-mounted CDs. Time will, undoubtedly, tell.

Remember when John Squire left the Stone Roses, first time around, leaving them to scrabble around with stand-in guitarists to fulfil concert obligations? Yeah, you're my age or thereabouts, of course you remember. And remember how excited everyone got when Squire's new project, The Seahorses, emerged, seemingly fully formed, within a year? Okay, so there were mutterings... that Squire's lauded guitar playing had descended into self-indulgence, that the Seahorses' singer was a busker, and that the two didn't see eye to eye that well... that sort of thing. But the mutterings were overlooked, debut album Do It Yourself was generally quite well received, and the singles from it - Love Is The Law, Blinded By The Sun and Love Me Or Leave Me - all did well (#3, #7 and #16 in the singles chart respectively). I seem to remember a performance of Love Is The Law on Top Of The Pops where the crowd bowed, we're not worthy style, before Squire's riffing. Forget vocalist Chris Helme's excellent voice and teen-girl-bothering looks, it was Squire's project, and he was supposed to be the star.

And maybe that was part of the problem. Yes, Helme was spotted busking by Squire's guitar tech, but he could really sing, and he wrote songs too... just not the sort of songs that Squire was interested in. Indeed, John was hesitant about Chris from the start, concerned that he "closed his eyes when he sang and only folk singers do that", and later observing that "he can write the odd tune but I don't really like them and it might be a problem later on if he wants to record them with the band." Equally, Chris, once established in the band, felt undervalued and concerned about Squire's guitar onanism - he would later describe Squire's material as "muso wank". As if that wasn't enough, fan rumours about the band's name were rife, The Seahorses being an anagram of He Hates Roses - a trivial coincidence, but Squire felt the need to deny it, which the NME lapped up, of course. Plus the material was patchy - yes, the singles were great but parts of the rest of the album seemed a bit Fisher-Price, to the extent that some wondered whether the acclaim and column-inches afforded the band had been earned. And to top it all, the band were parodied by DJs Mark and Lard, as The Shirehorses. For all Squire's serious aspirations, the band seemed there to be lampooned.

But there was to be a parting shot. The band, now just Seahorses, dropping the definite article in a fruitless attempt to escape the anagram theorists, released one final single, today's Clandestine Classic, You Can Talk To Me - this saw Helme and Squire share the writing credits, and is perhaps their best co-composition. Helme's voice soars as it is want to do, whilst Squire reins in his over-blown tendencies and plays it with a straight bat, keeping the chords quite simple - it feels almost like a traditional folk tune. Although if you study the lyrics closely, you can almost see the join between the Helme and Squire lyrics - the middle eight with the natural born killer/Polyfilla rhyme feels a bit out of place. Whoever's song it really is, Helme still performs this live, as part of his stripped down solo set, and it still works.

Whatever. The band's last single limped to #15 in the chart, but the expected parent album failed to materialise, and the band imploded (as bands with Squire in tend to do, sometimes more than once). This then was their swansong and, for me, remains the best, most sing-along single from what was most definitely a singles band: Helme (literally) ends on a high note and Squire tacks a bit of muso rock noodling on the end, for old times' sake.

There's no Seahorses "best of" that I can find, so if you want to own today's classic you're talking silly money on Amazon. YouTube it is then.