Filthy Boy - Smile That Won’t Go Down

‘Smile That Won’t Go Down’ is an album which looks at you with a single quizzically raised eyebrow. Angled like a church steeple, balanced precariously above an eye which sparkles suggestively and a grin that thinly implies wry amusement.

The last album with similarly aligned features was Franz Ferdinand’s debut. Although whereas Franz took a slightly veiled, “did he-say?”, “does-he-mean?”, “come and dance with me Michael?” approach to their suggestions of debauchery, Filthy Boy just come right out and say it. Pow. Right in the kisser.

It seems Filthy Boy are appropriately named. Dirty Boy reads Razzle. Filthy Boy reads The Chap. Dirty Boy has unspecific stains on his ratty jeans, nervously tokes from ratty roll-ups and stares at the world from behind thick-rimed glasses. Filthy Boy wears a velvet dressing gown, smokes a pipe, and rakishly sports a monocle.

They sit somewhere ‘betwixt Alex Turner’s skilful vignettes, Pulp’s skilful vignettes and well, Morrissey’s skilful vignettes. Basically, there’s a lot of vignetting. ‘Smile That Won’t Go Down’ is 12 expertly constructed tales of seedy goings-on, told from a voyeur’s perspective with a newsreader’s impartiality.

‘Waiting On The Doorsteps’ takes a pair of nipple clamps to the standard tale of boy meets girl (boy pops round to declare undying love, girl is servicing the plumber and ‘the man who said he came to fix the heating,’ boy is somewhat disappointed), and sets it to an elegant riff which could have come from a pre-war Arctic Monkeys; sort of ‘When I’m Cleaning Dancefloors’.

‘Mental Conditions’ is a lovely folky, lightly psychedelic strum which you could well imagine The Coral happily turfing out with a cry of “that’s the one la”, but that just happens to be about the adventures of Tony, probable psychopath, who “doesn’t know why / but likes to watch while they cry.”

Musically, there’s less obvious cleverness, but as the backdrop to the musings the pervading slightly angular, slightly jerky, slightly trebly guitar sound works. It’s classy, subtle and never scrappy. There’s something welcoming about the combination, particularly when lead singer Paraic Morrissey’s soothing baritone joins the fun.

As debuts go ‘Smile That Won’t Go Down’ is a quite a success. It’s witty and wordy and bawdy and really kind of charming. It’s a bit like being offered sweets from a stranger while you’re playing on the swings. Wrong, but tempting all the same.