12.18.2013

Jon Lawless and Mary Cassidy :: "Best Jewel Thief In The World" [Feat. Torquil Campbell of Stars]


Jon Lawless and Mary Cassidy collaborate with Torquil Campbell of Stars on Prefab Sprout cover, "Best Jewel Thief In The World". Campbell is a near evangelist for Prefab Sprout's 1980s Britpop jams and turns up here with gravitas and delicacy in duets with Cassidy. Lawless and Campbell first connected when Lawless spun a Prefab song at a party and Campbell rushed over to high-five him, asking, "How old are you?" - two brilliant musicians separated by nearly two decades of age and united in the love of a marginally famous band from the 1980s. "Best Jewel Thief In The World" is nominally about a transcendent cat burglar spanning the roof tops, lyrics like, "Down below, down below, what do any of those assholes know?", and Lawless crafts a simple acoustic progression that sustains the organizing allegory about theft and beauty. It's about hiding in plain sight, it's about the heists that happen right in front of us, it's about love. "Rooftops are for dreamers" Campbell sings, reorienting the listener to consider the narrator: Only he can see the thief.

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