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, Justin Burford – the founding member and leader of Perth pop-rock stalwarts End Of Fashion – has penned an epic ode (one of the longest in the column’s history) to the last hurrah for Fleetwood Mac‘s classic line-up: 1987’s Tango In The Night.
The letter arrives with not only the eerie timing of Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham seemingly having mended fences (if Instagram is to be believed), but also ahead of Burford taking a new-look End Of Fashion out on the road for a 20th anniversary tour. The run will see Burford and co. playing the band’s self-titled 2005 debut album in full, as well as selections from the rest of their discography. The album will also receive a vinyl reissue to commemorate both the tour and its 20th anniversary, including an entire second disc of demos, B-sides and previously-unreleased music from the era. Stream End Of Fashion below, with Justin’s love letter to Tango In The Night after that, as well as End Of Fashion’s upcoming 20th anniversary tour dates listed at the bottom.
End Of Fashion – End Of Fashion
My dear Tango,
For the sake of our relationship, I feel obliged to open with honesty: You were not my first. You may not be my last. Indeed, there are albums I’ve known longer. Albums I did (and do) like, albums I’ve loved and still love, albums I admire, albums that were teachers, albums that were affairs, albums that were flings, albums I’m proud to own, albums that will remain secret and guilty pleasures.
I’ve had all sorts of relationships with all sorts of albums over the course of my musically polyamorous lifespan. Only very few, however, transcend mere adjectives and platitudes, summary and concept. Only very few have burrowed in to my soul, and mutated my DNA. These are the albums that have – for want of a better word – become family. To me, my dearest Tango In The Night, you are one such album.
Sure, your more mature sibling Rumours may get all the attention – and not necessarily without good reason – but it is my conviction that you are very much the all-too-often-overlooked metaphorical “middle child” of your authorial parentage. Desperate for approval, you are a hot and perfectly-imperfect mess, shining bright in spite of… nay, because of your fundamental and inspired contradictions.
When I was a Xennial pre-teen middle child myself, you were on high rotation (both literally and figuratively) atop the Sansui component system’s record player – a centrepiece of the suburban Burford household. You became as much a brother, sister, parent, babysitter etc. as any of these corporeal claimants. Unlike those formative figures however, our kinship is as much fluid as it is frozen. Immortal. Ageless. Still, I would have little to no idea how much you, yourself a snapshot, would shape me. How many times I would visit, revisit, and revisit again in the decades to come.
Much like family, wherever and whenever I happen to find myself – be it in state, or state of mind – you, my dear Tango, have turned many a house into a home. You’ve always found and left me with a sense of drifting. But, yours is not a drift without purpose. Yours is a drift of aim, current and course, if not destination. Indeed, you drifted into my life at an age when I was not yet grown, but no longer entirely innocent, either. Your coordinated contradiction has informed my creativity ever since.
You are a touchstone. A catalyst, timekeeper and capsule. Time and again, I’ve lost myself in the pictures you’ve painted across my many ceilings. I see stars and seas and mountains. I see the sun’s rays shine through storm clouds. Through you, I become an eavesdropper on eternal youth and beauty. A voyaging voyeur of heartbreak and joy, excess and emptiness, hope and resignation.
Fleetwood Mac – ‘Seven Wonders’
Before I lose myself beyond rescue to the alluring poetry of nostalgia, allow me to role-play archaeologist, digging deep into the nitty gritty, so I might at least attempt to discover just what makes you so very you. Opening with unbridled confidence, your jungle rhythm establishes the invitation. I graciously accept, and you welcome me to your tribe. Lilting guitar, lamenting vocals… the nocturnal ceremony begins.
Suddenly, all at once, everything is volcanoes and catharsis until you spirit me along with pseudo sexual utterances – the most primal of languages. The biggest of loves. As your next offering swells, even that which is synthetic does its best to appear organic. Is this the primordial swamp, birthing a humanity that will come to love and lose as we naively venture forth into the world? Truly a wonder.
Next, a sonic sparkle shifts our gaze toward the stars. We are made of them and want to be with them, everywhere. As an aside, this may very well be the most underrated bass line in the history of popular music. All too soon, you call me back to the jungle, deep now into the darkest hours of night. I am hypnotised by the groove of your restrained dangers, your lingering potential for violence. To be human is to be animal, to love and to hate, oftentimes in equal measure. This is also true of your titular track, playing counterpart to the previous, with a turn that is more contemplative and tempered. You are growing… and, dare I suggest, evolving.
Shall we take a moment of levity? Shall we slow dance (or better yet, tango) on a long forgotten candle-lit beach, lost somewhere between the edges of wilderness and cosmos? Arm in arm, we reflect upon the majesty of mystery, the yin to the yang, the feminine caress complementing the heavy hand of masculinity. A moment of reflective silence, broken by an invitation to turn the page, honouring our tendency to revel in sweet incongruity. Love me. But, if you can’t do that, lie to me and tell me you do. I’ll take living in delusion over living without. It’s the ultimate romance. A facade of good faith. Along this line, though it pains me to admit, like any family, you are not without your flaws.
Sadly, this brings us to the end of the best you have to offer. All endings have a beginning and this, ironically, is where your boldest claim is made. Perhaps you’re not the family man you think you are, in this, your most disconnected, hollow moment. Then again, on second thought, maybe it was I who was too quick to pass judgement. Perhaps I was just too close to see it? Yes! Perhaps even this is far more poignant than I, up until this very moment, had all but realised! Oh, the irony of misplaced irony! Cast me no blame! After all, I am a child of divorce!
You sing for me a final, sweet lullaby of hushed reassurance. And with this, as the twinkling sky ever so subtly lightens and our long, strange night draws to an end, the tango tires, ready to sleep the day away. A single, flirtatious kiss, backlit by a bittersweet seaside sunrise before we part, for now, quietly anticipating future entanglements.
Wait, this isn’t a review, is it? That’s not the point here! This is simply an indulgence, and indulge indeed I have! As such, certain my word count has long since spilled well past the lip, I’ll leave with this: Like all the most special souls we meet upon this mortal coil, you’ve turned out to be an unlikely companion in mine. As much a surprise to me as I am to you, I’m sure. You taught me that contradictions are inherently wonderful, even if often misunderstood and painfully overlooked. You taught me that the luscious is all the more when it bears an edge. That the edges go down easier with a spoonful of sparkling sugar.
You taught me to embrace my contradictions. To lean in to them. To own them. And I have. Indeed, I turned them into an identity. Like you, dear Tango, I travel a million miles in a million directions and yet, somehow, despite the odds, I always find my way home. You are the aching pillow of distant memories and cautious optimism on which I lay my head and heart. Yes, I know what they say. One can never truly go home again. But thankfully, my dear Tango In The Night, as far away and lost as I may become, time and again, you bring me as close to home as anyone possibly can.
End Of Fashion 20th Anniversary 2025 Tour
- Friday, August 15th – The Brightside, Brisbane QLD
- Saturday, August 16th – Crowbar, Sydney NSW
- Friday, August 22nd – The Night Cat, Melbourne VIC
- Saturday, August 23rd – Jive, Adelaide SA
- Saturday, August 30th – The Rosemount, Perth WA
All remaining tickets are on sale now via End-Of-Fashion.com.
Further Reading
Love Letter To A Record: Zenith Moon On Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’
Love Letter To A Record: Jesse Redwing On ‘The Best Of The Original Fleetwood Mac’
Love Letter To A Record: Felivand On Sade’s ‘Love Deluxe’
