SOTD #102 // Coolrunnings: 'Road To Nowhere'

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Photo credit: Sandra Croft

It was the mid-eighties and Margaret Thatcher had reached the peak of her grassroots-industry destroying powers, Wham! were about to break up and Live Aid had shown just how hideously bloated and hypocritical the music industry had become.

On the other side of the ocean, Talking Heads had just released Little Creatures, their last great record and ‘Road to Nowhere’, their last really great song. It seems obvious now that the lyrics were more about the band than anything else and yet to my young self, barely a decade old, there was something charmingly optimistic and comforting rising above the melancholy. I dug it in the same way I loved Kate Bush’s ‘Cloudbusting’. Both songs gave me a sense of security while still glimpsing at the big bad grown up world through the gaps in the railings.

Twenty-five years later, here come tripped-out psychers Coolrunnings from Knoxville, Tennessee to crank up the melancholy and imbue the song with a threatingly off-key disharmony.

If, while listening to this, you experience a slight anxiety – maybe an ever-growing fear under the surface of your sanity – do not be alarmed. The world is still in the grips of a recovery and Cool Runnings decided to siphon off the collective neurosis of an entire generation into their wobbly, barking delivery of lines like “there’s a city in my mind, come along and take that ride and it’s alright…”

Coolrunnings: ‘Road To Nowhere’