Work Lovelife Miscellaneous

Scarcely destined to become one of the giants of Brit-pop, David Devant and co. nevertheless made an indelible contribution to the movement's peak period, with an album that has -- perhaps miraculously -- withstood the test of time with far greater aplomb that some of its better-known contemporaries. Built around the string of soar away singles that had sustained the band for the past two years -- that is the compulsive "Ginger," the triumphant chant of "This Is for Real," and the almost insidiously contagious "I'm Not Even Going to Try..." -- Work, Lovelife, Miscellaneous is the funhouse at the end of the pier that Blur tried so desperately to capture post-Parklife, and a battery of lesser pretenders drowned while swimming towards thereafter. It's wild and wacky, to be sure, as songs like "Reinvent the Wheel" and "The Last Ever Love Song" instantly, deliciously demonstrate. But there was a dark side to the Devant & His Spirit Wife too, one that was first manifested via the spooky little sort-of-ghost stories that were appended to a couple of their B-sides, and which reaches glorious fruition with "Ballroom," a spine chilling account of a game of Clue. The song remains one of Devant's most triumphant compositions and, though it was never released as a single in its own right, still it stands among the greatest hits the entire Brit-pop movement produced. ~ Dave Thompson|