Britpop : Time For Reevaluation?

britplop more like amirite

One of the problems with the term "Britpop" is it puts almost every single fucking UK guitar band into the same box, regardless of quality, or even style in some cases. In any other fucking era, Menswe@r would have been completely forgotten about within a couple of years, never to be spoken of again. They deserved to be. They weren't even good at the time. But, y'know, dredge up the B-word and suddenly you have to talk about a handful of great bands and a million shit ones. This does not happen with any other (apparent) "subgenre" ...

Turrican - you don't think this happens when you bring up trip-hop? There were numerous great artists and many substandard ones

Menswear were really not that bad, hating them is a boring cliche, the only reason anyone talked about them after 1996 was "weren't Menswear rubbish LOLZ" - where the real story was their co-optation by the campaign for real rock as an example of why artpop = bad, rockism = the only sensible choice. John Harris has a lot to answer for.

american here but to me britpop just means 90s british pop rock by folks who are probably into david bowie

david bowie and the smiths

x-post:

There are a handful of great artists and many substandard ones in every genre, but when the B-word is brought up, people go from Pulp to Menswe@r in 60 milliseconds. At least in a trip-hop conversation you'd expect a long discussion about the best of what happened before moving onto the worst. When it comes to this particular era of guitar music it's into the negatives near enough immediately, and confessing to like one of the better bands of the period always seems to come with a disclaimer.

One or two of the Britpop anniversary articles have been amusing to me too, mind. Some people would have you thinking that radio and music TV channels were dominated by UK guitar music: newsflash to folks who believe this - they weren't. The '90s were as diverse as any other decade.

I mean, this word "Britpop" ... it just does none of the bands that actually did great work any favours and it's flawed even as a description of a time period. It's a fucking useless word.

I just hate that the standard of debate around britpop is D- at best, even on here. There's a 'britpop news' site which... just look at the state of it - http://britpopnews.com/.
I wrote a bit on Menswear here (halfway down the page) and would very much disagree that they were in any way "the worst" especially when we are talking about Space.

Space were horrendous too - I always thought they were a bit of a joke band and found it incredibly difficult to take 'em seriously. They weren't even entertaining, just annoying.

I'm with Brimstead, we Americans were able to filter the music from the hype and overexposure (which I've heard was especially bad). I love Salads body of work and the first Sleeper singles are great, along with many small UK guitar bands from the era like China Drum and Compulsion.

china drum were terrible!

Cannot comment as I've never heard any bands play small UK guitars.

I am also American, enjoy tracks by both Salad and Sleeper, and note that once again, unless your name is Elastica, being a band fronted by a woman consigns you to the "lesser/shit band" pile

I'd say that's more to do with the fact that Elastica made at least one great album (the debut) whereas Sleeper, while a decent singles band, didn't make any.

fondish memories of China Drum's stupid pop-punk cover of "Wuthering Heights" down at the indie discos of yore, but their own songs were not v good, and now I am not a teenager it's hard to imagine a scenario in which I wouldn't just listen to the original instead

Salad's "Drink the Elixir", though, that's a great tune. Though I have no plans to go to this festival to hear an acoustic version of it.

Still hoping to see Silver Sun - "Lava" in one of these nostalgic Britpop rundowns.

I... fucking... give... UP

best female-fronted uk band of this era probably sidi bou said*, who are well worth hearing and remembered fondly by those who do remember them

*or bis? bis anyone? idk there's actually quite a few, not going to list them though that's lame

I have vague memories of Compulsion... I can't remember China Drum at all!

xxxp acoustic version of Drink the Elixir can also be listened to from the comfort of one's own home:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar-CVrs_EnA

(Salad Undressed are better than I expected tbh)

Lava by Silver Sun is great but not Britpop - it's straight-up American-style pop-punk, and belongs to the scene as little as (for example) Urusei Yatsura.

That Salad Undressed track works much better than I expected too

xp I guess. Fwiw the more Britpop-aligned people I knew all loved it and the (pop/skate)-punk people found them too weedy and harmonised.

tbh if being shoehorned into this is a way to start a long overdue Yatsura/Che revival I'll take it

Will rep for Siri Bou Said! They had a great Throwing Muses vibe.

China Drum were great fun and their second album, which most people probably didn't hear anyway, shows terrific growth. Then they went into the tank as 'The Drum'.

I am also American, enjoy tracks by both Salad and Sleeper, and note that once again, unless your name is Elastica, being a band fronted by a woman consigns you to the "lesser/shit band" pile

― a self-reinforcing downward spiral of male-centric indie (katherine),

Elastica were good and the other 2 were not. They join other shit bands like Ocean Colour Scene, Shed Seven, Catatonia, Bluetones, My Life Story, Supernaturals in the utterly shit bands pile along with thousands of others.
It's nothing to do with the sex of the members of the bands.

older ilxors will of course remember calum liked sleeper. Now there was a ringing endorsement!

Kenickie are a much loved band on ILM fwiw maybe even more so than Elastica

A good many Sleeper songs covered subjects that put them apart from other bands. The music, less so obviously.

Elastica were good and the other 2 were not. They join other shit bands like Ocean Colour Scene, Shed Seven, Catatonia, Bluetones, My Life Story, Supernaturals in the utterly shit bands pile along with thousands of others.
It's nothing to do with the sex of the members of the bands.

― Odysseus, Tuesday, February 21, 2017 4:23 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not a big fan of this post because

* Telling someone their experience of sexism is not real because you're not sexist
* Making a list of bands that are "shit" with no further explanation, which has to be one of my least favourite genres of internet comment

Quite.

loading up Youtube to see if those Sleeper/Salad singles are as good as I remember or as bad as people say they are (they do hold up, especially in a world where Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn seem to have got away with much worse) and finding the comments are nothing but a depressing sea of "been wanking to this for twenty years" nostalgia for objectification, I can't imagine why they would want to do a comeback tour if this is the level of fandom that exists for them

how is Echobelly's critical stock these days?

i did lol at the graphic designers' evident difficulty finding suitably dynamic and/or glamorous pictures of mark morriss and fucknuts from space for the poster. look at those dull bastards standing there grimacing

that's Mark's signature pose, though

http://media.ents24network.com/image/000/097/390/1cdada543b6dc7077a8423444e837b29bf1b652d.jpg http://thevictoriainnderby.co.uk/website/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/banner_MM.jpg https://a1-images.myspacecdn.com/images04/6/697712feb8c8470398480c985e0dd93c/300x300.jpg https://static.squarespace.com/static/541c0b85e4b03f1e8810dfc9/54257a32e4b08e517c1dd911/54257a35e4b08e517c1de288/1383924709567/1000w/markmorriss.jpg

I love the Bluetones and always felt that the scorn they receive is a little unfair, and that they would be critically acclaimed schmindie heroes if they'd released their records in the 80s rather than the 90s (probably would have sold a lot fewer units though)

My brother hung out with that bloke in a pub once about ten years ago and said he was really nice.

loading up Youtube to see if those Sleeper/Salad singles are as good as I remember or as bad as people say they are (they do hold up, especially in a world where Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn seem to have got away with much worse) and finding the comments are nothing but a depressing sea of "been wanking to this for twenty years" nostalgia for objectification, I can't imagine why they would want to do a comeback tour if this is the level of fandom that exists for them

― boxedjoy,

so calum posts on youtube then

Loved Sidi Bou Said. Great live. More of a Cardiacs thing going on (and shades of early Muses) than anything to do with the prevailing 60s pop thing. Haven't really had any desire to listen to their LPs in the last 15 years though. And the third one wasn't great. There was a spelling error on the spine ffs. And a little dice (die?) that you couldn't get out of the jewel case.

Salad had at least two good singles. I say at least because I only know two, and they're both good.

Why aren't Dodgy allowed on the poster but Jake Shillingford and Marijne van der Vlugt are? They had actual top 10/20 hits! Can't fathom why

I thought Dodgy was just the drummer guy now with friends so maybe that's why?

Maybe it's like Bucks Fizz with two touring versions :D

oh and if katherine interpreted what i said the way Camaraderie at Arms Length thinks then I apologise. Not what was intended.

Sleeper's The It Girl was and is a great album

Britpop : Time For Reevaluation? [Started by Langley in March 2003, last updated forty-one minutes ago] 71 new answers
The Britpop one hundred hall of joy! - Classics only. [Started by mark grout (mark grout) in January 2004, last updated one hour ago] 8 new answers

Is there Sleeper love on that too?

you don't win friends with dismissive posts about Salad

I couldn't give a toss about Salad.

Sleeper's The It Girl was and is a great album

― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Tuesday, 21 February 2017 14:07 (three hours ago) Permalink

I like the singles from it, and 'What Do I Do Now?' is a genuinely great song. Elvis Costello did a version of it, iirc. That record keeps cropping up in charity shops a hell of a lot.

Most of the Britpop era albums do for some reason

It's not hard to fathom the reason: a lot of not-so-great bands being signed on the back of the success of great bands + people buying records by the truckload = lots of not great records being donated to charity shops later on. It happens.

But there was some great guitar music made in the '90s and I'd rather talk about that. Sometimes conversations on this subject are like, I dunno, going into a synthpop discussion expecting to talk about Soft Cell or The Human League or Depeche Mode and evrryone going "lol Kajagoogoo" ...

*everyone