It's a shame that today's a Monday. It would be better if it were a Friday night. It would be better if the table was just getting cleared and there was nothing left to stand between us and that bar that's not all that far from our house. It's been a difficult week and we're just looking forward to some place that we can easily walk to, some place where the drinks are all reasonably priced, some place where we're guaranteed to see at least a half a dozen or more really good, solid friends and a place that we could stumble home from even if we were as knackered as we plan to get.
It would be better if it was that one night that we might feel kicking us in the weakened guts and slapping us in the liver. It's that one night that we'd regret for a full morning and perhaps even the beginning part of an afternoon, but we'd do it all over again because the night included some of those moments that feel like the reason we were given hearts in the first place - so they could swell and so they could tell you that now was the time to throw an arm around that buddy's shoulder and to sing songs together, to figure out the harmonies, to get loud.
The Futureheads, from Sunderland, England, made their second session a special one, recording this medley of songs in the belly of an old church in Crouch End, London, a cappella. They selected songs that covered a range of themes, but most felt beautifully dated and those that have been sung in rounds and rounds, between, before and after rounds of ale. They are songs of a ship's hangman and of priceless love. The band - made up of Ross Millard, Barry Hyde, David Craig and Dave Hyde - picked songs about gypsies, about the sea, about growing up and old and learning some things, but never learning it all, about rambling and about staying. They are jovial numbers about hard, but mostly cheerful lives and they make you want to clink glasses and raise toasts to more and more things.