Bransby: "One Night Stand"

We’ve all been there before; let’s not be glib. The morning after an incompatible dalliance, shuffling home like a fresh wren turfed from its love-nest; eyes swimming in greasy films and a prawn stink under the fingernails; you’ll never be reckless again, yeah yeah yeah. All of a sudden you’re on the corner of Main Street, just trying to keep it in line when—Christ in a Jensen—you realise you left home yesterday with protection instead of your iPod. Suddenly you’re halfway home with nothing but a choice of the six test mp3s you keep on your phone for back-up. But which one’s going to save you? And where can you score that all-important Sugar Puff sandwich for your headache?

Well, thanks to Welsh blogger Bransby Macdonald-Williams, you need never dither again. His sweet ‘n sour “One Night Stand” has been re-released from its Spinach compilation CD and is now open for public download, presumably to help promote the album’s worth of material he’s offering for free on his homepage. A one-man blues and busking template, it’s a stricken, soulful wedge of hindsight told from the point of view of someone who’s just been initiated into a life of grisly misfires. “Call me what you want, just don’t call me the next day / I love you here and now the outside world has gone away / In the morning light we’ll see that this could never last / And as that sweet sorrow descends it would be nice to have some breakfast”, he croons at the climax of the tune, perhaps offering the dictionary definition of what it means to postulate. It might not be the kind of mood boost the masses will go nuts for if they’ve just stuck their tongue in a stranger, but it’s got that holy X factor that supplies you with the one thing you were after all along: empathy. We’re sorry it didn’t work out for you, Mr and Mrs Macdonald-Williams. Perhaps next time you should try screening each other via Facebook.

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