SONG: "Conversation Intercom" - Soulwax (Much Against Everyone's Advice, 1999)

I love songs that send out one set of signals but are actually about something else entirely – partly because I like to feel smug and superior when telling people that they don’t know a song until they’ve really listened to it, and partly because when I have a go at reworking tracks acoustically it means that the songs can often take people completely by surprise (“Oh, I never knew it had any meaning!”). Perhaps my favourite example of this paradox in recent years – which, funnily enough, has also become my biggest bugbear ever since it became appropriated by clueless slappers with no understanding of its true intent - is The Killers’ Mr. Brightside, under whose shimmering disco surface seethes a wrenchingly sad tale of emotional torment and sexual jealousy (check out my take on it here).

Ironically for a band so technologically forward-thinking in their approach to writing and performing (Soulwax were arguably one of the first modern bands to successfully marry alternative rock songwriting to a dance-oriented production ethic, with their subsequent work as re-mixers, bootleggers and producers practically inventing the electro-clash genre), here the Dewaele brothers find themselves at the mercy of a piece of machinery.

Lead singer Stephen’s nemesis is his lover’s answerphone. Throughout the course of the song, he finds himself unable to speak to this dehumanising machine which distorts his every word and “makes a whispering man sound as if he cries”. Everything he tries to get across becomes twisted when relayed through this impersonal mediator (“You hear what I say, but it comes out all wrong”); what is heard is never what was intended, and you can really feel the desperation creeping in as he finds himself frantically hitting “1-800, dial-to-be-heard”. It’s a simply enough metaphor, but sometimes the most straightfoward conceits are the most effective. When taken more widely the song’s principal themes of misdirection and miscommunication speak volumes to anyone who’s ever struggled to talk to someone they love and found themselves thwarted by seemingly insurmountable obstacles, be they physical or emotional - certainly if you slow the song down (as the band did for a bonus track on a reissued version of parent LP Much Against Everyone’s Advice) it assumes a whole new resonance and becomes infinitely sadder in tone.

Sonically the production masks the song’s deeper vulnerabilities: a throbbing bass-line pulsates rhythmically throughout over a spiky, mechanical drumbeat while a slide guitar zithers away merrily with an apparent total disregard for everything else that’s going on. There’s no doubt that this is one of the best-sounding records I’ve ever heard; it somehow manages to marry the steely edge of contemporary dance music to the grimy feel of introspective indie, all the while retaining the kind of ice-cool precision and effortless showmanship than have become the band’s stock-in-trade. However, it’s the song itself which really captures my imagination – more so than any other in the Soulwax back catalogue, it has real heart, and possesses more feeling than the band would usually allow themselves to exhibit. That the track ends on such a downbeat note with only a fragile piano and hushed vocal remaining (both cleverly recorded in such a way that it emulates what the person on the other end might hear coming out of the machine) serves only to emphasise its unassuming depth and beauty.