Love Letter To A Record: Polish Club On Oasis’s ‘What’s The Story (Morning Glory)?’

September 16, 2024

By John-Henry Pajak

Music Feeds’ Love Letter to a Record series asks artists to reflect on their relationship with the music they love and share stories about how it has influenced their lives. Here, Polish Club’s John-Henry Pajak pays homage to Oasis‘s iconic 1995 sophomore album ‘What’s The Story (Morning Glory)?’.

It comes not only as the Brit-rock icons reunite for a long-awaited world stadium tour, but also as Polish Club themselves have just loosed their fourth album, ‘Heavy Weight Heart’. According to Pajak, it’s a record that “feels like the closing of a really big chapter of both of our lives and careers”, marking the start of a brand new, fully autonomous life for the duo, who will take the album on the road throughout October with stops in Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Read Pajak’s love letter to a record, and peep those tour dates down below.

Polish Club – Heavy Weight Heart

John-Henry Pajak: Dear first album I owned on tape,

I hope you are well, buried in a bin bag amongst MTG and 90’s basketball cards in my parents garage.

It’s been a while but a recent reunion got me thinking about you.

I have to admit that I’ve not listened to you much over the past 20ish years. Whenever I tried to put you on my “cool” mates would be repulsed and snatch back the AUX cord. On top of that my band mate is one of those Blur guys, so I can’t even cover your songs.

But from a couple of weeks ago I started feeling like it’s again acceptable to say that I like you. And give you a long overdue spin.

And I gotta say It felt real good to have you in my ears. Your insanely overly layered guitars, your plinky drums weirdly low in the mix. Your field recorded bits and pointless requiring motifs. Your tasty orchestral arrangements and timeless melodies all with the range of a nursery rhyme.

You feel so familiar, so much so that I can’t tell if your songs are a blatant rip off or are now constantly ripped off by others… which is such a pop sweet-spot these days. I guess you were both ahead and behind the times, at the same time.

You have the exterior of a dangerous rock record made by tough blokes but really your centre is soft and mushy and maybe a bit cringe. But ya know what, all rockin’ ROCK music is.

You have a few really similar songs but that ok cos you are just clever enough and make just enough unexpected decisions to make me love you as much as I did when I was 10 years old.

I’d love to see your songs played live, but there is no way I’m gonna deal with virtual waiting rooms and dynamic ticket pricing.

Anyways, good to hear you and I’ll see you in another twenty years, maybe when there’s a death in the family.

Love always
JH

PS. “Agro Too” was actually the first album I owned on tape, but it’s a lot less topical at the mo.