Bill Ryder-Jones blesses us with a profound masterpiece, ‘This Can’t Go On’
My better half has been bracing a few potholes on life’s rocky road of late, so as soon I heard ‘This Can’t Go On’, the new single by Bill Ryder-Jones, I sent it straight to her. “Wow,” she quickly replied along with a gif of Nicolas Cage experiencing a whirlwind of emotions, “one of those songs that makes you understand why you live.”
Not all of our message exchanges are that profound, by the way. For context, the previous texts had been about the odd mystery of why nobody can ever get more than 9/10 dentists to agree on something, and whether occasional contrarianism regarding recommendations is simply hardwired into their tooth-addled trade. But this daft musing soon ceased when Ryder-Jones’ new song soared its way into our days.
There is something so arresting about ‘This Can’t Go On’ that immediately renders the world a little more epic. I think it is the hope it contains. Looked at from one side, the title of the track might seem despairing, but in actuality, ‘This Can’t Go On’ as a phrase is merely the obverse of ‘Things Are Going to Get Better’ and a close neighbour to ‘This Too Shall Pass’. It asserts that when all is lost, the business of finding it again begins.
It’s this brimming hope and the eudaimonia of new dawn that washes everything I could say about shoegaze, string arrangements, Echo & The Bunnymen, syncopated drums, and so on, with blinding sun; largely rendering typical analysis, even for the most technical listener, redundant in a well-spring of feeling—the sort of feeling that strangely makes you want to run, as though your biology wants to make use of the energy unleashed, and feel the cold wash of life upon your skin as you race through dog dirt-lined streets feeling like the kid from E.T. at the point the bike takes off.
It might start as a man wandering aimlessly into a breakdown, but lifted by an orchestral ascension, it rises to the other side of that, looking back at the potholes of memory lane, and transfiguring past hardships as the stimuli that sharpen the vitality of life, having triumphantly surmounted trouble, now basking in a munificent harvest of awed gratitude. This is, in essence, what art is all about; provoking a recalibration of the humdrum everyday into something a bit more than that. ‘This Can’t Go On’ achieves that awakening of the senses and sentiments with more glory than a sporting montage, and that’s why it is a consummate masterpiece.
Complete with a video starring a lad who surely must be Leighton Baines’ son, with the fascinating sort of face that has Oscar-winner written all over it, the track comes at the right time, turning the potentially drab months of Autumn into a second spring, golden leaves not dying but in bloom. It announces his forthcoming album, Iechyd Da, in such considerable style that platitudes like ‘considerable style’ seem a little silly when it comes to this Cathedral of a life-affirming song.
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