Track of the Week: The Skids: Into The Valley (1979)

Hailing from Dunfermline in Scotland and jumped up on punk and glam-rock energy, The Skids were a fantastic New Wave band, and 'Into The Valley', their 1979 single, is their masterpiece. The song takes The Skids trademark sound - somewhere between a football chant and a Caledonian battle hymn - and nails it perfectly. It opens with William Simpson's driving, throbbing bassline, before the entry of Tom Kellichan's martial drummer-boy's drums and Stuart Adamson's instantly memorable guitar riff kick the song into gear. Rousing and victorious in tone, the song is topped off by Richard Jobson's lyrics, which are, depending on your point of view, cryptic and poetic or hilariously pretentious - "Into the Valley /Betrothed and divine / Realisations no virtue /But who can define /Why soldiers go marching /Those masses a line". Yeah. But I can only tell you that that's what he's saying because I looked them up - Jobson's bizarre, strangulated singing voice garbles the lyrics and renders them utterly indecipherable so it hardly matters anyway. The tune is so memorable and catchy that you don't even bother to think about what the words are, but are swept up by the pure pop thrill of it all. The chorus kicks our with chant-along "Ahoy! Ahoy"s by the whole band, adding to the sheer sense of fun. Then Stuart Adamson treats us to a soaring, histrionic guitar solo - his individual, chiming uplifting soloing and economical, catchy riffing is a clear influence on both The Edge from U2 and Graham Coxon from Blur. At the end of the song, Jobson gives up on lyrics all together, and basically winds up singing 'Lalalalalalalalalala' for the rest of the song. As it fades out, your natural reaction is to go straight back to the beginning and play the track all over again. Unsurprisingly, it reached the Top 10 in the charts and landed them a performance on Top of the Pops. Listening to the song today, you can hear its influence on the New Wave, Brit Pop and the recent post-punk revival.
The Skids produced more great pop singles, but the tempestuous relationship between Richard Jobson, the man with the lyrics, and Stuart Adamson, the guy with the tunes, meant that Adamson left after their third album, and Jobson wisely split the band after a disastrous final album without him. Adamson achieved mainstream success with Big Country, who had their moments, but never matched the transcendental brilliance of his former band's best moments.