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The Fear

by Desperate Journalist

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about

Much-admired darkpop dreamers DESPERATE JOURNALIST are popping their heads out of the giant pandemic duvet with the special release of their cover of Pulp’s ‘The Fear’ on October 2nd.

Back in the panic-stricken spring of 2020, when the growing global pandemic ensured that the playing of gigs suddenly became as practical as the flying of pigs, fierce panda asked its newly domesticated acts to choose a favourite tune by a.n.other band with which to rockdown in lockdown. These covers would form the Covid Version Sessions, informal home recordings designed to capture the unsettling mood of the moment, and now those recordings are all seeing the digital release light of day throughout the autumn.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and doom’n’boom experts Desperate Journalist couldn’t really capture the unsettling mood of the moment much more adroitly than by flirting with a song called ‘The Fear’ and anointing it with their patented brand of bruisingly lowslung indie sass.

“We are all fans of Pulp in the band, but my personal favourite album of theirs is ‘This Is Hardcore’,” explains singer Jo. “It's where Jarvis's talent for the great observational lyric meets a cracking in his writerly facade, and the parallels between all the unusually personal angst in the songs and the death-of-the-Britpop-party cultural landscape of the UK at the time add up to a sublimely melancholic and relatable whole. It's my go-to hangover record so (as bassist Simon says) I know it like the back of my hand. Anyway our friend Kevin kept suggesting we do a cover of ‘The Fear’ every now and again and it finally made sense in April what with the entire world slowly supernovaing into oblivion around us, all shut in our houses, so we had a go, because there was nothing else to do.”

Desperate Journalist have been more lockdowned than most this year: after the sensational response to their 2019 album ‘In Search Of The Miraculous’ – their third exemplary longplayer - the foursome were already hiding away working on new material when the proverbial pandemic shutters came slamming down in March.

Desperate Journalist’s fearless take on ‘The Fear’ is the second of the fierce panda Covid Version releases in the wake of woozy dreamboats MOON PANDA, who took The Strokes’ ‘Call It Fate, Call It Karma’ outside for a big cosmic cuddle on September 11th. More CV tunes from GHOST SUNS, JEKYLL, CHINA BEARS and NATIONAL SERVICE coming soon…

lyrics

This is our "Music from A Bachelor's Den"
The sound of loneliness turned up to ten
A horror soundtrack from a stagnant waterbed
And it sounds just like this.

This is the sound of someone losing the plot
Making out that they're okay when they're not
You're gonna like it
But not a lot
And the chorus goes like this
Oh, baby
Here comes the fear again, oh-oh
The end is near again, oh-oh
A monkey's built a house on your back
You can't get anyone to come in the sack
And here comes another panic attack, oh
Here we go again

So now you know the words to our song
Pretty soon you'll all be singing along
When you're sad, when you're lonely
And it all turns out wrong
When you've got the fear

And when you're no longer searching
For beauty or love
Just some kind of life
With the edges taken off
When you can't even define what it is that you're frightened of
This song will be here

Oh, baby
Here comes the fear gain, oh-oh
The end is near again, oh-oh
If you ever get that chimp off your back
If you ever find the thing that you lack
But you know you're only having a laugh, oh
And here we go again
Until the end

Until the end
Ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh-ooh
Ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh-ooh

credits

released October 2, 2020
Written By: Pulp (Candida Doyle / Jarvis Branson Cocker / Mark Andrew Webber / Nick Banks / Stephen Patrick Mackey)

Performed By: Desperate Journalist [Jo Bevan (vocals), Rob Hardy (guitar), Simon Drowner (bass) and Caroline Helbert (drums)]

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Desperate Journalist London, UK

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