Shoes With No Socks In Cold Weather

In their fortieth year A Certain Ratio have gone all out and are set to release an anniversary box set in May, twenty eight tracks making up the singles and B-sides that weren't included on any of their albums and sixteen previously unreleased songs. You can read about it here. Ahead of this they have just put this out, the semi-legendary results of the time in 1980 that ACR, Martin Hannett and Grace Jones assembled in Stockport's Strawberry Studios to record a cover version of Talking Heads' Houses In Motion. In the end Grace never completed her vocal for the track so Jez Kerr's guide vocals are used instead (from a period when Jez wasn't even ACR's singer yet). How this has managed to lie unreleased for nearly four decades is something of a mystery but now it's here and, as they say, better late than never, the Eno- produced New York funk of Talking Heads transplanted across the Atlantic to a side street in northern England at the start of the 80s. Taut bass, monotone vocal, congas and some stunning distorted, choppy guitar playing from Martin Moscrop before those wonderful, off key horns.



The video is completely new but fits the general vibe perfectly. The song is the from the vaults find of the year so far.