I wanted to try and establish a theme for this month. If you don’t know, Sequelitis is a term reserved for sequels to an artist’s magnum opus that don’t quite make the grade. Sometimes it’s because it went in a totally different direction and hit a wall, sometimes the artist in question just gave up, or sometimes it simply didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of being as good. In musical terms, it’s your Be Here Nows, your Tusks, your Give Out But Don’t Give Ups.
Sometimes though, Sequelitis is averted. For example, Radiohead managed it with Kid A as we’ve established here on A-Side Glance (see here: https://asideglance.com/2021/01/23/entry-16-kid-a-a-k-a-fames-a-bitch-part-2/). I wanted to see if it’s the case for this month’s bands and artists. Could they keep their career apexes going with a one-two punch, or was the sky just a bit too high?
But first!
Earlier this month a half dozen singles were released within a week that piqued my interest. As I continue to do my Britpop show on Spark Sunderland (and indeed I’ve already covered all of them on that show), I’m all too happy to see some favourites of mine still releasing new material, as well as relative newcomers and outsiders. That being said, I want to get the negatives out of the way and we begin with a musician who has been suffering from sequelitis since…God, if his fanbase is anything to go by, 2002?
Richard Ashcroft – Lover
That about sums it up.
I get that musicians are allowed to explore different avenues, perhaps bring their music more up to date. But considering the lofty highs Richard Ashcroft has been measured against for the past thirty years, he would need an airtight song to get his loyal fanbase onside.
Take one look at the comment section of the vid and you will discover that that is not the case.
Ashcroft has produced a song that sounds like it was solely made to get him back in the charts, quality and principles be damned. It ticks all the boxes of a modern day, stream-as-background-noise song. Heavy and overbearing bass and percussion? Check. Bland lyrics about love and a chorus a six-year-old would write? Check. Overuse of yeah-yeahs and oh-ohs like a C-tier R&B singer? Check. Autotune from Richard f*cking Ashcroft? Check-o-rama.
I get that he’s never going to recreate Urban Hymns, and nor may he even want to. But this? Ashcroft is way above this. Ironically though, if he plays this at Wembley it’ll make the crowd even more hyped up for Oasis – They won’t be able to wait for this song to end.
Paul Weller – Lawdy Rolla/Pinball
Paul’s about to add another notch to his belt, and when Find El Dorado was announced I was most certainly hyped up.
Then I read it was a covers album.
Call me stubborn but I cannot abide covers albums, I find them to be a waste of time, placeholders until the artist can be bothered to get something original out again. And this isn’t the first time Paul has done this – See Studio 150. Although to be fair, that album does include Wishing on a Star which does prove that Paul can put enjoyable spins on other’s music. So I might be writing this new album off a bit too soon.
That being said, Lawdy Rolla isn’t doing it for me. It’s a bit too basic and while the saxophone solo is enjoyable, it’s not enough to get me on side. Ditto for Pinball and it’s sprinklings of Mellotron.
I think I’ll be giving Find El Dorado a miss.
The Kowloons – I Don’t Care
You don’t get a lot of bands who are proud to flaunt their music as Britpop these days, but the Kowloons are perhaps the biggest exception to the rule. They have a clear love of the genre, and British music at large, helped by the fact they come from Liverpool. I first became aware of them when they covered lost La’s song Fishing Net, and lately I’ve been getting a kick out of featuring them on the radio.
I Don’t Care is their latest Britpop anthem, influenced by the words of Noel Gallagher and Lee Mavers, and refined by Chris Griffiths of the Real People. It’s a song for the summer, prompting one to get off their arses and just enjoy themselves.
Sweet. That’s the best way to describe this song, and you cannot help but smile when you listen to it. It’s impossible to hate because everything just seems to click. You can read the lyrics as romantic or chummy however you wish, you can nod your head to the beat (emanating from drums once used by ex-La Chris Sharrock), and you can dance along to the acoustics (in turn emanating from a guitar belonging to Lee Mavers. The Kowloons are well-connected it seems). I need to see these guys live at some point.
Suede – Disintegrate
Suede are on their way back with their tenth LP in September, and for me personally it’s got a lot to live up to. Their most recent effort, 2022’s Autofiction, was probably their best album since Coming Up, so it bodes well that the upcoming Antidepressants appears to be weaved from the same cloth. Suede are transitioning from punk to post-punk, and they’re doing well so far with the title track and the new single, Disintegrate.
It took a couple of listens for it to grow on me (Like Blur’s The Narcissist, this initially felt a bit flat), but it’s a proper good thumper of a track that’s going to sound incredible once the lads are back on tour. I was going to say that Brett’s voice sounds as great as ever, but frankly that applies to Suede on the whole. They’ve been back together for well over a decade now and they haven’t put a foot wrong. The consistency continues strong, and I can’t wait for Antidepressants on September 5th.
Pulp – Got To Have Love
In case you needed reminding that Jarvis is one of the wittiest songwriters to be found here in Britain, here’s a song that was trialled but didn’t make it onto We Love Life. Now it’s part of More, and it more than deserves its flowers.
If Spike Island was a spiritual sequel to Sorted For E’s and Wizz, then Got To Have Love is the natural progression from F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E. Pulp have more often than not dipped their toes into the waters of 70s sounds. For this, it’s an elegant swandive complimented by Jarvis giving himself a stern talking to and shirking the idea that ‘love’ is a cliché. Highlights include “Without love, you’re just jerking off inside someone else” and “So learn to say it whilst keeping a straight face, yeah say it, say it you ponce”
Bonus points for replacing the uncanny valley AI with old recordings of the Wigan Casino.
Roll on June 6th.
Robbie Williams – Rocket
Don’t close the tab just yet, stick with me here. No I haven’t lost my mind, no I am not losing my edge, I am merely taking a curious delve into Robbie Williams’ newest single because he has announced his next album is called Britpop. As I play and provide patois on Britpop on the radio, I had to at least check out what he was up to.
And damn me to hell and back, I actually liked this.
This will inevitably be chalked up to some as Robbie having a midlife crisis – He’s gone on record as saying this was the album he wanted to make post-Take That, and here he is glorifying the mid 90s scene (“What a time to be alive!”) whilst parading around London in an outfit that has to be seen to be believed. But his fast, frenetic performance helpfully complimented by Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath (!) is the best kind of ear worm. It doesn’t leave you behind, and you don’t mind that at all. And because of that, I am for the first time in my life looking forward to a Robbie Williams album.
Screw it, let Robbie play this live and then follow it up with Old Before I Die and I’d argue he should be the one supporting Oasis, bollocks to Ashcroft.
Ok maybe that’s a bit too far, let’s talk albums now.
Spiritualized – Let It Come Down
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space is one of my favourite albums of all time, and it’s easy to see why it beat such heavyweights as Urban Hymns and OK Computer to top the NME’s albums of the year list in 1997. That in turn explains why the follow up was a four-year job for Jason Pierce – Anything short of perfect would be considered a disaster. But the man, with seeming ease, doesn’t just grab the bull by the horns; he brings it to kneel and dares it to call Let It Come Down shit.
Ladies and Gentlemen… is often considered a breakup album, one of a heavy and broken heart, so you’d be forgiven for thinking that this is the ‘rebound’ album where Pierce says he’s OK now. And indeed, you are lulled into that mindset at first, until you reach Out of Sight and you realise “Ok, no, he’s still smarting”. Around the same time, you also end up thinking “Christ almighty, this makes a Phil Spector mix sound thin, how much layering does one song need?”. “Yes.” is Jason’s simple reply.
While this technique does occasionally feel like a gimmick that leaves songs like The Twelve Steps overly smothered and lathered, it does overall bolster this album to its status as a worthy successor to Ladies and Gentlemen…. It might be a trite term, but there’s no other word I can think of to describe Let It Come Down than ‘majestic’.
Tame Impala – The Slow Rush
In the gaming world, there’s been a popular meme lately where people name something rare and unexpected thing (like the pandemic, the two Trump presidencies and the Oasis reunion to name a few) that we got before Grand Theft Auto VI.
I guess right now the mainstream music equivalent is getting all these things before the fifth Tame Impala album. Borderline still gets played once in a blue moon on the radio but we haven’t had anything new from Kevin Parker since 2020.
I get he’s a perfectionist, that much is clear in how polished The Slow Rush is. But can he please hurry things along because this album can only fill the hole for so long. It ain’t crap, but it ain’t no Currents or Lonerism either.
The Divine Comedy – Fin de Siècle
Another one of my favourite albums is Casanova. It’s follow up is both an album that didn’t get the time of day in 1998, and one I still forget to pronounce correctly (10 years on from when my brain vomited up every last word of French to the point of no return on my GCSE paper).
But why does it have the status of ‘Just another Divine Comedy album’? Does Fin de Siècle not have any classic tracks on it? Well that’s an immediate no, it’s got National Express on it, except when you listen to the album you realise that that song sticks out like a sore thumb – It’s the only real classic Divine Comedy track to be found. That being said, Commuter Love and Sunrise are two superb tracks in their own right and should absolutely not be slept on under any circumstances.
The sound of the band is more confident and mature than its predecessors, they have definitely found their footing by this point and songs like Thrillseeker and Sweden are elevated massively as a result. However the album’s main drawbacks can be traced to the undercurrent of dourness and the lack of trademark wink-and-nudge. Take the lead singles; Generation Sex is a passing swipe at the lad scene and at times the whole of the 90s, but the smirk behind the lyrics doesn’t make it the most endearing listen; The Certainty of Chance might sound magnificent but it seems more focused on being whimsical than witty. Strange for a band called the Divine Comedy.
On the whole, I like Fin de Siècle. But I can’t push myself to love it like Casanova as I think I should. Sequelitis struck Neil down here.
Happy Mondays – Yes Please!
This could very easily have been a case of an album’s reputation being more interesting than its content. Here are the cliffnotes:
Shaun was religiously chasing the dragon, Bez kept breaking his arm, Mark was tanking mentally, producers Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth were questioning their life choices, Johnny Marr came and wisely went after 20 minutes, the island of Barbados turned out to be a crack haven, and Factory ended up paying £50 to hear a series of instrumentals because the band (or rather, Shaun) had either run out of time or hadn’t bothered to do lyrics.
Happy the Mondays were not, and that much is clear in the sound of songs such as Stinkin’ Thinkin’ and especially Angel, which shows that post-punk can indeed mix with funk. Fair play on that one. Unfortunately, the rather one-dimensional sounds of the Caribbean and the general antipathy which can be heard in Shaun’s lyrics and singing can at times be off-putting.
Having listened to it, I think it’s the album’s reputation that in turn bolsters its content and makes it interesting – It sounds like a fun holiday in the sun, which keeps uncontrollably spinning into disaster, and if you read between the lines you’ll know that our Mancunian tourists aren’t feeling it. Far from an instant classic compared to Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches, and arguably too stark a departure from the Madchester sound the Mondays helped pioneer, but I don’t think this should be written off with a ‘No thanks’ as it was in 1992. Give it a swatch.
Right then, got an idea for next time. I want to be more eclectic with my albums next month so I’m going to leave it in the hands of fate. Or rather, a 900+ page book, and a random number generator.
A-Side Glance 