The La's came out of the fertile Liverpool art-rock scene of the mid-1980s, which produced bands like Echo & the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes. Revolving around writer/singer Lee Mavers and bassist John Power, the La's are notably simpler and more stripped down then any of their contemporaries.

Always tormented by line-up changes and backstage turmoil, the band began recording their debut album in 1986. In one way or another, they have continued doing so ever since. Four producers attempted to get the songs on tape, and the album titled simply The La's was cobbled together by Steve Lilywhite at the insistence of the label, and has been rejected by the band. For me, it is hard to see what the problem is. The songs are far from complicated, the instrumentation is a relaxed combo of acoustic guitars and simple bass lines, coupled with one or two-part leads. Critics and fans alike love this album. It has made the charts several times, and has been remixed more than once.

Yet somewhere in Liverpool, Lee Mavers is still toiling away in a studio, endlessly recording and re-recording these same dozen songs, trying to find some elusive end point that only he can see. Twenty years making the same album over and over again, an album that everyone else already agrees is perfect. It is a muscian's idea of hell. While the band has gigged sporadically, (with typical irony, only performing Who covers), they have never officially released anything else.

I don't think that any band who as spent fruitless time in the studio could listen to this album without a touch of sympathy. Around the time of Sea of No Cares, we spent our own year in studio purgatory, and it is not an experience I would care to repeat. We recorded Gideon Brown (of all things) four times from start to finish, with several different drummers and more hooks than you could imagine, before we finally got it right. Somewhere I have a cd with over a dozen mixes of Widow In The Window, none of which were quite what we were looking for. Things got so complicated that I had to learn the bouzouki part for Sea of No Cares after the album came out. Producer Pete Perlesnick had edited together over 50 different takes to find the exact part he wanted, very few of which had been recorded at the same time, or even on the same day. Maybe the average listener can hear all this struggle, but now I just wonder "what was the problem, anyway?".

The same thought bothers me when I listen to these songs. There She Goes is one of my favourite lovesongs. I don't suppose everyone can identify with the narrator, building a fantasy around a girl who he doesn't even have the courage to talk to, but I certainly can. Mavers was a physically awkward man, and you can hear the pain of his adolescence in every line. The song has been covered by many artists, and has been a hit single again and again, but no amount of syrup can harm its perfection. Son of a Gun is weirder, a song about a mercenary that revolves around a riff of ideal simplicity. The groove is straight out of the Byrds catalogue, but it is coupled with a strange vocal, all delivery and no power. Mavers half-talks and half-sings, cutting words short, and pushing vowels out of proportion, in a way that really sticks in your head. You end up hearing every word, catching every nuance. And then the song just stops. I like to think that Mavers got to then end of his last verse, and decided that he'd said everything he wanted to say in the song - so why keep going, anyway?

Unfortunately, he could not apply this philosophy to anything else. A lot of folk songs combine sadness with beauty to create timeless music. The La's are far from a folk band, but whether Mavers knows it or not, he finished these songs a long time ago.

If you want,
I'll sell you a life story,
About a man who's at loggerheads with his past all the time.

He's alive, and he's living in purgatory,
All he's doing is rooming in hotel rooms,
And scooping up lots of wine.

He was burned, by the 20th century,
Now he's doing time, in the back of his mind,
He can hear them outside.

-Son of a Gun, The La's

*On a side note - GreatBigSea.com offers commercial links to these artists as a service to those who live far away from good record stores, or aren't particularly internet savvy, and would like to learn about or hold this music for themselves. We will make next to nothing from any sales - the point is to get good (and usually obscure) music out there.