School

This is a brilliant song. Musically, it is a very accomplished piece. The guitar parts are very well played, with some great hooks and very intricately played guitar work (particularly at the end). Alongside the cello, the guitar goes relatively unnoticed because the synthesiser and piano-keyboards are more prominent. Luke Haines' vocals are also excellent in this song, and he reaches falsetto in the 3rd verse (where he sings "on the way back from the church, your brother got home early") and at the end of the song. Lyrically, this song is a tour-de-force also, being possibly one of the main key stories that make up the storyboard of the whole album - the controversial-but largely misunderstood title "How I Learned to Love the Bootboys" (in which Haines went one-step further than Morrissey did in his album "Your Arsenal" in taking on a human-scale appraisal of those involved with white nationalism, focussing more specifically upon the social milieu of working-class culture in 1970s Britain - though it is an album that goes beyond just being a storyboard dissection/examination of 70s Britain, being at it takes in songs concerned with hints of premonition & past events/experiences resurrected). Like his absolute classic "Unsolved Child Murder", "School" is written as a storyboard narrative, and like in 'Unsolved Child Murder', lines of narrative refer to various instances across past, present and future tense (unlike 'Unsolved Child Murder', the lyrics are the thoughts of one character, not the thoughts of more than one person). I actually now think it is one of Haine's finest works. The highlight? The haunting synthesizers that rise over the existing musical arrangement that continues on in the song come in over it as a kind of surround-sound that provides a deliberately eerie atmosphere in the 3rd verse, heightening the recalling of a key past experience ("I am standing in the front-room with your mother and your father, I am talking with a man who says he baptised you, on the way back from the church, your brother got home early", abridged with then at the end of the verse the character in present-tense saying to himself "I am waiting for a man to collect me from the station" (a set of words repeated throughout the song). "School" appears to be a story of a boy having got involved with a firm or network of people, in which there are suggestions of white nationalism as was the social milieu in large parts of white-working class Britain in the 1970s ("Join the army or the National Front when you're 16, Mickey says you were undressed, easily led in the back field"), as well as hints of paedophilia ("Maybe I could come around, your brother's out - cop a feel"). The lyrics in the chorus "And the kids around the flats, the mums and dads, your uncle" conveys the character subject recounting the place of his childhood and growing up, looking back with ambivalence at that time with perhaps a tinge of sad fondness which he has left behind, followed by the line "I'm never going back, to your old school" reflecting his adamant stance as almost an exercise in self-reinforcing self-affirmation that he has made a firm break with his past. The first verse reveals the character's situation: "I am waiting for a man to collect me from the station, he will drive me past your house & the bridge and the precinct, later on he'll stuff my mouth with flies, sit astride me, I am waiting for a man to collect me from the station". Flies are used to represent rot, wasting away, decay, death, melancholia, so the image of having his mouth "stuffed with flies" conveys exposure to a fateful event that has done long-term damage. It is ambiguous. It could refer to a sexual assault ("sit astride me") or an intervention of some other kind which has engendered a malaise later on in the character. Certainly, the references to life on the estate he grew up in in evoking fond memories speaking of "kids around the flats, the mums and dads" conveys sad melancholy of harking back to something with a tinge of regret that he left all that behind but can never go back to it ("your old school"). If the kid has joined in with bootboys, it would have meant the severing of social relationships with scores of people he may have grown up with in the past.

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Lyrically, this song is significant also, perhaps being one of the main stories underpinning the album on which it is a part (1 of 12 songs) - the controversial but largely misunderstood title "How I Learned to Love the Bootboys". Like his absolute classic "Unsolved Child Murder", "School" is written as a storyboard narrative, and like in 'Unsolved Child Murder', lines of narrative refer to various instances across past, present and future tense. I actually now think it is one of Haine's finest works. The highlight? The haunting synthesizers that rise over the existing musical arrangement that continues on in the song come in over it as a kind of surround-sound that provides a deliberately eerie atmosphere in the 3rd verse, heightening the recalling of a key past experience ("I am standing in the front-room with your mother and your father, I am talking with a man who says he baptised you, on the way back from the church, your brother got home early", abridged with then at the end of the verse the character in present-tense saying to himself "I am waiting for a man to collect me from the station" (a set of words repeated throughout the song). "School" appears to be a story of a boy having got involved with a firm or network of people, in which there are suggestions of white nationalism as was the social milieu in large parts of white-working class Britain in the 1970s ("Join the army or the National Front when you're 16, Mickey says you were undressed, easily led in the back field"), as well as hints of paedophilia ("Maybe I could come around, your brother's out - cop a feel"). The lyrics in the chorus "And the kids around the flats, the mums and dads, your uncle" conveys the character subject recounting the place of his childhood and growing up, looking back with ambivalence at that time with perhaps a tinge of sad fondness which he has left behind, followed by the line "I'm never going back, to your old school" reflecting his adamant stance as almost an exercise in self-reinforcing self-affirmation that he has made a firm break with his past. The first verse reveals the character's situation: "I am waiting for a man to collect me from the station, he will drive me past your house & the bridge and the precinct, later on he'll stuff my mouth with flies, sit astride me, I am waiting for a man to collect me from the station". Flies are used to represent rot, wasting away, decay, death, melancholia, so the image of having his mouth "stuffed with flies" conveys exposure to a fateful event that has done long-term damage. It is ambiguous. It could refer to a sexual assault ("sit astride me") or an intervention of some other kind which has engendered a malaise later on in the character. Certainly, the references to life on the estate he grew up in in evoking fond memories speaking of "kids around the flats, the mums and dads" conveys sad melancholy of harking back to something with a tinge of regret that he left all that behind but can never go back to it ("your old school"). If the kid has joined in with bootboys, it would have meant the severing of social relationships with scores of people he may have grown up with in the past.

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c'mon! the guys a genius!