Bickers is magnificent and harmonises prettily Fij narrates with feeling and dexterity. There are no weak moments here this is about as complete a collection as you would ever want to hear. She got the chequebook and I got withdrawn." And the wry defeatism of 'Breaking Up' cannot fail to raise a smile: "She got the laptop, and I got wired. ![]() I phoned Betty Ford, but they're fully booked" – magnificent. There can't have been many songs written over the past decade that are better than 'Betty Ford' with its quite brilliant howling, lovely backing harmonies and tale of quite impossible failure: "If love is a drug, then I am hooked. That he is now making country music is indisputable, but thankfully, as the album artwork underlines, that country is England, so there are no repulsive steel guitars but a whole host of bleak songs that are chock full of wit and dark humour. The man was always a great songwriter, and though the brash Piotr Fijalkowski of Adorable has mellowed over the years, the talent remains undiluted. ![]() To me it's something more alive, a scratched 45, worn through loving," declares the new single 'Out of Time' with typically impressive lyrical dexterity. You seem to treat love like a voucher code, a free download, the latest plug-in. You know I can't connect – I'm not a techno lover. Fij reaches out but gathers only emptiness. Make no mistake, this is a maudlin collection of songs there's not a solitary glimmer of light here, nor a moment of connection. Pete Fij's forgotten album began to be heard. Of course it helped that Bickers was the greatest guitarist ever to emerge from the independent music scene and that he has a lightness of touch that defies understanding, being able to flood a song with sadness at the merest touch, or lift it to the heavens with understated ease. Being no stranger himself to missed opportunity and overwhelming melancholy, the mood of the songs obviously appealed to The House of Love guitarist and together the pair of former Creation artists began to work the collection into new life. Nervous about the performance, Fij decided to seek assistance and got on the phone to Terry Bickers to see if he would be interested in fleshing out the project. ![]() And it was not until 2009, when he was asked to play live once again, that the songs were brought into the light. Like his own little picture of Dorian Gray, Broken Heart Surgery absorbed years of pain and regret while the singer set about rebuilding his life. Fij never played it to anybody or looked to release it to the public. When completed, the album was put into a drawer and left to lie in solitary gloom. And it's not happy holidays in the Isle of Wight that linger in his mind, but the moments of pain and loss: the girl who slipped through his fingers, the words he should have said, or the actions he neglected to take all the little things that could so easily have filled his life with love, joy and success rather than dust it with the ashes of failure. For, like that herd of elephants, Pete Fij is a man who never forgets. However deep he buried himself, though, he couldn't escape the songs which kept on coming and he saved his pennies to pay for short sessions at a small recording studio in Brighton where eleven tracks were laid down over a period of eighteen months, all capturing his downbeat mood and all eschewing traditional song structures in favour of a pared down approach where nothing unnecessary was allowed to dilute the overriding message of desolation. Pete Fij's Broken Heart Surgery had its genesis some twelve years ago when the singer, dismayed by the lack of reaction to his band Polak's second album Rubbernecking, decided he no longer wanted to work within the restraints of a group and hid himself away on the Sussex coast, dejected and out of love with the music industry. Some records come easily and some have a gestation period longer than a herd of elephants.
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