The Sweetness Lies Within PURE87CDS

CD single and 7" vinyl Released 5th October 1998

The Sweetness Lies Within, Hello Kitten, Normal Molly, A Hymn for Berlin

The 7" included Sweetness and Hello Kitten

The Sweetness Lies Within 

There's just a sea between us,
I know this hope will find us.
This serenade reminds us,
Be calm, be strong, be patient.
White skin and auburn hair that,
Just makes me stare and stare and,
You're a friend that really cares and,
You have a healing quality that I see.
But the sweetness lies within you,
And I swear I won't forget you.
When you're tying back your hair,
You have the prettiest of necks.
All the angels broke my heart,
Yes they really had a knack,
Because I loved life so,
And they didn't love me back.
But I swear it's not your beauty,
It's something inside,
It's the grace that you hide,
It's the sweetness that's within.
Beware of spiteful eyes because,
They know not what they do.
Wear clothes that look good on you,
And boys will flock from all of Europe.
Treasure time that was spent with me and,
I will wait for eternity and,
I belong between the angels knees and,
Those filthy little angels never want to sleep with me again.

Hello Kitten

Hello kitten I don't miss sex just the feeling of skin against skin that I want,
The photos I take are not the photos I like, they look dull, they look crap when placed next to real life,
You have a blue iris with a hint of burnt of sienna and it wrestles my hate to the ground,
You have inquisitive eyebrows that make me soft centred and your lips make a purring sound.
I'm going to make myself go blind tonight,
I'm going to make myself go blind tonight,
I'm going to build a shrine to the wasted days,
I'm going to make myself go blind tonight.
Hello kitten, you'll never know what it's like to be me when I'm curled at your feet,
I thought you were perfect but that racist joke just made it all bitter sweet.
Won't you slap me around and make my lips a bit swollen so we can spend a day off work,
Won't you cut up my arm and lock it in a suitcase, cause love is coming in spurts, I'm so fucking happy it hurts.

Normal Molly

She made me sweat, she mad me swoon.
Oh she put me off my food.
And when her boyfriend left the room,
She showed me her tattoo.
The girls wear roll necks, the boys wear button-downs and they sit and they frown,
As she leads me to her room.
And now she's taking her clothes off before me,
She has the skinniest elbows I've ever seen.
And once our bodies are warm we'll be shaking our peaches we'll be twisting till dawn,
We both know what we're doing but we don't care, but we don't care.
And if she reads Daily Mail I will leave her,
And if she smokes too much pot I will leave her,
When she says she is skint I believe her,
And Christ only knows how I need her.
The girls wear hipsters the boys wear jeans,
They don't understand what I mean when I say she's too good for me.

The Hymn for Berlin 

God he is the author the creator of your sex,
And God creates the air that flows underneath your legs,
So why don't you just lie back and think of Bethlehem,
When will you lie with me again.
Last time we made love in Berlin, oh I noticed tiny bruises on your ankles,
Your hair was cut much shorter then it used to be you were looking European.
You said Honey pie push a little softer, Angel face come a little slower, be still and I will make it easier for you,
The Angels designed buildings for the mighty new Berlin,
sweeping curves and parallel lines that let the daylight in,
and there beside the whore house is the church where we committed sin.

During the sessions for BGH we recorded a much slower version of this song, with a melodica doing the main melody part in the chorus. Too Pure hated it and told us to do it again, they were right, this version is much better. This single was accompanied by our first and possibly best video. All but one of our videos were directed by John Hardwick. He's a real one off, and we were happy to let him have complete control over everything. For his part I don't think he could believe his luck because we agreed to pretty much everything he suggested, nude suits, dancing, lots of running. He once told me that he'd stopped making videos and would only make them for Hefner and Travis from now on.

The three b-sides were recorded by Suzanne Rhatigan and sound great. We should have recorded a lot more with her, but I guess that's easy to say in retrospect. That's not as big a mistake as making Hello Kitten the b-side though. This song grew to be perhaps our most popular with the fans and we rarely got away without playing it in our show. Once at the Emmaboda festival in Sweden it seemed that all the audience had come for this song alone. It is of course about wanking. The main chorus phrase coming from the English expression 'You'll go blind if you don't stop doing that.' Its something mums say when they catch little boys playing with themselves.

Before the band took off I used to work for the national blood transfusion service, collecting blood. A lot of the people I worked with were older women and a lot of the characters there and the things they would say would end up in the songs I was writing at the time. One girl, Jane, used to refer to girls she didn't like as 'Normal Mollies'.

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I had been to Berlin a few times and always loved going back there, but 'The Hymn for Berlin' doesn't really do it justice. That's Suzanne singing on it, her bits are great.

After BGH we started playing a few more gigs, and short runs of shows abroad. We even played our first show in New York for the CMJ. In December of that year we did a tour of Spain with the band Jack and a 4AD band called Cuba. Hefner would never be the same after that trip to Spain. We discovered free drugs, free drink, our future tour manager John Haskett, our Spanish promoter and good friend Barnaby and of course the infamous Everlasting Records. If you ever find yourselves in a band and signed to Everlasting records, get medical insurance.

Photos from top; Hefner in Glasgow Museum of Art (Hefner), Hefner in Brussels (G.Harrison), Sweetness video still, Suzanne Rhatigan (? G. Birch), Darren in New York for CMJ (J.Denitto), BGH promo shot (Eva Vermandel), Ant and John somewhere in Europe (D. Hayman).