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Oct 25, 2013 By JR Moores

Forgotten Songs is our recurring series where a musician or one of our writers examines a song they love that they feel has been overlooked. It could be a song by an artist who never made it big, or it could be a B-side/rarity or unheralded album track by a more well-known artist. For this edition of Forgotten Songs, Under the Radar‘s own JR Moores writes about The French’s “The Wu-Tang Clan.”

After the split of cult post-Britpoppers Hefner, and prior to his reinvention as an Early Modernist solo troubadour, the bespectacled indie legend Darren Hayman formed a short-lived duo called the French with his ex-Hefner compatriot John Morrison. Hefner’s final album Dead Media (2001), which Hayman jokingly refers to as his band’s Kid A or Metal Machine Music, had committed the ungodly indie sin of introducing electronic elements into the band’s sound. “Simply trite,” spat Pitchfork when confronted with the analog synth tracks that now sat alongside Hefner’s urban folk ballads. “You’re better off sticking with vintage Pet Shop Boys and ABC.” Not to be deterred by such criticism, The French confidently strode even further down the retro keyboard route, ditching stringed instruments altogether and swearing to play their instruments strictly monophonically (i.e. without chords). The resulting album, Local Information (2003), “torpedoed Hayman’s career and instigated a two-year legal tussle with his label,” according to Hefner’s official bio—yet the singer still insists it is one of his best releases.

That album featured this incredible, underrated number. Over wonky, lo-fi keyboards, Hayman sings about an introverted woman who lives in a council flat in Walthamstow, London. People on the train move away “because she stinks of work.” Her friends are all getting married, while she lives in constant dread of being asked out again by a bloke named Terry. All she really wants to do is be alone. Alone, that is, listening to The Wu-Tang Clan. She identifies with ODB (then still alive) in his prison cell. She fantasizes about comforting Ol’ Dirty’s troubled soul. There is, it has to be said, an amusing element to the incongruity of an indie white boy singing a homage to the East Coast’s predominant samurai-worshipping hip-hop crew. But Hayman knows his subject, and this is no act of patronizing mockery. When he starts listing Clan members (“RZA, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck…”), Hayman proves he is more than a casual Wu listener by using U-God’s lesser-known alias “Golden Arms.”

“The Wu-Tang Clan” is not just about The Wu-Tang Clan, of course. Its wider theme is the power of music—even music from seemingly distant cultures or places—to touch, strengthen, heal and comfort:

“And the thought hits her at 105bpm/That sometimes for a second/She believes that everything will be all right.”

It’s undoubtedly a more reverential, thoughtful, and soulful tribute to the “Beatles of hip-hop” than softcore R&B whinger Drake’s recent effort “Wu Tang Forever.” Inspectah Deck wasn’t too happy with Drake’s cut, tweeting, “It is in no form a tribute to WU and SHOULD NOT wear the title Wutang Forever!” I’m dying to know if ‘Deck and his fellow Wu-Tangers have ever heard The French’s beautiful little ditty, and what on Earth they might make of it. I like to think they’d give it their Shaolin Killa Bee respect.