Mondeo Pop

electronic: mondeo pop for people who don't like mondeo pop.

I think there's something to be said about that... guys like Sreynolds who were scared and confused by Danny Wilson could find something in Electronic to calm them down, I think?

The Blue Nile transcend Mondeo Pop surely - although maybe not Peace At Last. But the first two albums are too widescreen. I think of a lot of these other bands as being more accomodating than that.

I think Blue Nile are perhaps... I dunno. They do seem like the "hard edge" of one side of Mondeo Pop, in the same way that Wet Wet Wet are the hard edge in the opposite direction (I don't want to say pop v indie here, because it isn't, but it's at least part of the same argument). I do wonder if perhaps there are less than 20 Mondeo Pop bands out there?

i wouldn't expect tim to drop rockist-tinged concepts like 'transcend'.

blue nile are maybe MP's leading edge. chronologically speaking. they come from the right place, geographically too.

Blue Nile, Aztec Camera, Prefab Sprout... Mondeo Pop for fanzine writers?

Did they (Blue Nile) ever have a hit single? I don't think I've ever knowingly heard them.

NRQ: ha ha true. "transcend" may be the wrong word here. Anyway it implies that I don't like mondeo pop that much when actually I do like a lot of it - but The Blue Nile take a lot of mondeo pop elements and then make them so... intense... that they almost cease to be mondeo anymore.

More "transcend" in a pop sense though I think - like how "Sweet Like Chocolate" "transcends" "UK Garage". (okay I'll stop with the inverted commas now)

Three top 20 albums, no hit singles. I suppose being an album band defeats the "music for the working day" idiom of MP tho?

xp

Maybe and Robert Palmer is so not Mondeo Pop I don't think Sonic Youth would fuck with true Mondeo Pop. It's like Shania Twain is not Mondeo Pop but someone somewhere maybe listening to her whilst driving a Mondeo. Get me?

I think there's a massive Carmody style death of Liberal England thing lurking in the idea of Mondeo Pop. A lot of Mondeo Pop digs into soul and perhaps folk, a desire for erk AUTHENTICITY, which of course is why Grimey Simey had issues. Soul-cialists he calls them.

The Corrs and Texas are in a grey zone. NRQ mentioned KT Tunstall on the Mondeo Pop Facebook group then deleted it. Hmmm.

it's authenticity, but not of this kind:

"Well, I'm a lucky man
With fire in my hands

Happiness
Something in my own place
I'm standing naked
Smiling, I feel no disgrace
With who I am

Happiness
Coming and going
I watch you look at me
Watch my fever growing
I know just who I am"

which is what i meant by the verve needing to tone it down a bit.

it's more folky kind of authenticity. but not too much, if you get me.

What about Oasis then?

I do think that there is a certain smallness (or perhaps "containment" is the better word) to this stuff on a conscious stylistic level, such that when I say The Blue Nile go beyond it I'm not trying to be judgmental, just descriptive... A song like Wet Wet Wet's "Sweet Surrender" strikes me as deliberately pledging fidelity to a certain, quite conservative notion of songfulness. It reminds me of all those glowing descriptions of Crowded House's "tunesmithery" in Q Magazine back in the day. What is the implication of the phrase "tunesmith"? Craft over art? Tunes as honestly and humbly purposive and functional?

Also: let's talk about Fairground Attraction. Especially "It's Got To Be Perfect", which I adored back in the day.

The Blue Nile are the Mike & The Mechanics it's okay to like.

oasis -- and the verve -- were just too rough-hewn for this, sonically and lyrically. but maybe 'round our way' was approaching heaton. maybe. and what i was saying was, songs like 'sonnet' were taking the verve further towards MP. and naturally 'urban hymns' rang out of actual mondeos.

xpost

I mentioned Oasis cos 97 era Verve seems far more in a lineage with Oasis than say Prefab Sprout. 1997, Blair, Diana. Hedonism and sentiment finally overules Mondeo Pop streak of "Stay humble, stay low"?

yeah, fuck it. i'll buy.

But... The Man Who.

"The Man Who" is the album that killed Mondeo Pop.

I always thought that Fairground Attraction were more 2CV fodder - all that wilful rusticity crammed with a creak into a shiny new wicker picnic hamper full of shit spritzer and shoved on the backseat in a jam outside Maidenhead. I guess the Bluebells had a lot of this about them too. Also Carmel? Matt Bianco?

The folkish authenticity thing accommodates Eddie Reader's 'The Patience Of Angels' in addition 'The Second Summer Of Love', 'Young At Heart', 'Nothing Ever Happens'. I can sense tangible connections from this to Tunstall but the connections to the more urban/youthier sophistopop are harder to trace, and a far cry from something like Dave Stewart's 'Heart Of Stone'.

Matt Bianco were surely too *shiny* to be Mondeo Pop? Same reason, in a roundabout way, that Spandu Ballet and ABC aren't Mondeo Pop.

*Spandau

How did The Man Who kill Mondeo Pop... oh and then there's David Gray... I think it may have been at the scene but I don't think it was actually responsible.

xp

NickB probably right re 2CV. same things that keeps Hothouse Flowers not in this thing.

nickb's post is a thing to treasure.

Thing is you could NEVER have imagined Thatcher enjoying Mondeo Pop but there's Blair top 10 records of 1996 in that John Harris book and i is lamost 100% Mondeo Pop.

Travis were the point where Mondeo Pop made too great gains into both "pop" and "indie", they were on TOTP more, they were on Radio 1 more, they actively courted the NME and Melody Maker. It's wher ethe boundaries got broken up, which is why even if, say, Keane or Scouting for Girls wanted to make a Mondeo Pop album in this day and age they couldn't.

Keane and Scouting For Girls, The Feeling, Coldplay et al are all from a very different world. I don't see any of them writing anything so rooted if you see what I mean.

Lack of folk influence, surely? There's no humbleness.

Even when Mondeo Pop was smug (Heaton Heaton Heaton), it still meant it, maaaan. You can't say that about The Feeling.

For Lily Allen there is no such thing as society.

'the man who' isn't it. 'the man who' is profoundly post-1997. it and david gray and coldplay served perhaps a comparable audience to true school mondeo pop. but it's a galaxy away.

All I know is that after the release of "Driftwood", The Beautiful South never had another top 20 single.

why? it has the folkiness, the humility, the comunal thing, healy was always on the "we just making pop here tip. what's that song where he lays diss on wonderwall and devil's haircut? y know franny's 4real. still dunno quite where later period manics fit.

xp

and they are scottish...

it just feels wrong to me, chief.

mondeo pop is clever, but not too clever; a little sardonic sometimes but not mean. i probably read too much coldplay into travis, but they were too 'universal', not clever, never sardonic. no grit to them.

Maybe then tomorrow will be Monday
And whatever's in my eye should go away
But still the radio is playing all the usual
And what's a Wonderwall anway

AND

Travis - Slide Show Lyrics

Today is the day
For dancing and for singing
The birds in the trees and all
The bells are ringing
The sun is in the sky
Is bright as bright second light
Is bright oh god I hope I'm alright

Cause I'm gonna cry
Hold on, hold on
Slow down, slow down
You're out of touch
Out of touch
'Cause there is no design for life
There's no devil's haircut in my mind
There is not a wonderwall to climb
To climb or step around
But there is a slide show and it's so slow
Flashing through my mind

Today was the day
But only for the first time
Hold on, hold on
Slow down, slow down
You're out of touch
Out of touch

'Cause there is no design for life
There is no devil's haircut in your mind
There is not a wonderwall
To climb or step around
But there is a slidesshow and it's so slow
Flashing through my mind

Today was the day
But only for the first time
I hope it's not the last time

There is no devil's haircut in your mind

zing

Oh just saw the:
Today was the day

But only for the first time
Hold on, hold on
Slow down, slow down
You're out of touch
Out of touch

And realized I completely forgot the looming inspiration of Radiohead and Jeff Buckley.

wouldn't catch them in a mondeo, figuratively speaking.

When Travis debuted, didn't they get a lot of Radiohead comparisons?

turin brakes 'pain killer' is calling - will MP accept the charges?

Well, no Travis started as a post Britpop rock act, like Silversun or The Supernaturals.

xp

Someone's gonna mention Starsailor in a minute and then we're gonna be all "oh shi"

xp

i have no idea how travis got compared to radiohead, but that's what happened. based on 'high and dry' and um, er...

when Starsailor released 'Alcoholic' i fucking called it re Darkside Danny Wilson

Quitney: Godrich production, Healy aproximating that vocal styling, Radiohead being a bit closer to Mondeo Pop than anyone would care to admit.

We need Singstar: Mondeo Pop ASAP

Songsmithery in the modern world?

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51bpghLLQ8L._SS500_.jpg

Poor quitney Dr Morbius on one side Mondeo Mafia on the other. Stay strong buddy.