Mansun : Classic or Dud

"Six" remains a singularly imaginative, inventive and utterly ludicrous treasure of an album, idiotic of lyric and guitar-fx heavy of instrumentation... filled with 80s pop, 70s prog and glam, and late 90s pro-tooled post modernist edits. Ripe for re-examination or utterly beyond the pale?

Taking Sides: Mansun vs. Kula Shaker

I can actually totally see it getting rediscovered as some kind of lost weird classic @ some point in the future.

"(I never make these ridiculous hyperbolic posts but here I go)

Mansun's "Six" is my favorite record of all time.

(Did you make it past that sentence?)

Maybe a little more for sentimental and influential reasons now, but I still haven't found a record that has had more impact on my life than Six. I picked it up when I was 17, and it changed the way I listened to music from the very moment I started listening to it. The ambition, the nerve, the way every song had 14 different sections, how it dipped its hand in art-rock, techno, opera, guitar pop, psychedelia, pomposity, anarchy, and sheer ridiculousness was completely inspiring to me as a musician, and frankly, it still is today. It encompasses most of the qualitites and elements I love in music and in life.

Sure, I'm more into techno and house these days, but I have no shame at all in loving Mansun."

...pretty much sums up why this album is my favourite record of all-time as well. You forgot to add the bit (my bit) about Cancer being the finest song ever written, possessing as it does the best opening riff, the funniest chorus, the coolest background voice-effects, the MOST AWESOME GUITAR-SOLO, and the chillest, saddest ending of ANY SONG EVER. Who cares what the lyrics are saying; I'll sing along to Serotonin every time because it's such a mesmeric TUNE and the bloke SINGS IT SO WELL (see also: The Mars Volta, but that's another fight). Of course it will be rediscovered; I only discovered it last year aged 18 (i.e. no longer a child, the age at which most Mansun fans are accused of being exposed to the music) and already it's my fast favourite. Surely the point of music is to try and create the greatest piece of art one can possibly muster, and in order to do that one must differentiate oneself from the rest of the pack through sheer originality? As far as I'm concerned Mansun succeeded utterly in their ambitions, creating an album as full of life, melody, great surprises, brain-taxing musical challenges and balls-out verve as any I have ever heard. The way it is dismissed in some quarters dismays me and I genuinely hope that one day it will be re-appraised as the work of legend that it is.

Oh, and Radiohead named it as one of their major post-OK Computer influences, so you hipsters can go away happy as well...

(cue another picture of circling buzzards...)

Rationally and objectively, it is as uncompromising and inventive (i.e. they did not rely on the tried and trusted sounds to compose the record, they searched through an extremely varied sound palette before choosing the RIGHT one) as any record I have heard, and the rest is just down to personal preference. I like my music to be made up of 'agreeable surprises', with size of surprise measured against quantity of surprises in a sort of bar-chart. An album like Hood's Rustic Houses Forlorn Valleys is entirely one-paced and almost without change but the mood created is so evocative that I love the album exclusively on the 'size of surprise' criterion. Whereas The Fiery Furnaces I suppose are the other extreme; so many 'magical moments' that quite a few are bound to stick.

'Six' is the only album where size and quantity of surprise are at about 100%. Therefore it is my favourite.

If you see what I mean...

discus

i don't like mansun, although i don't loathe them like i loathe other britpop, and am frankly shocked that there are people thinking about them in 2006.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

(x-post oh that "little britain". I haven't got a telly, so I haven't seen it. I thought there was a band called little britain, or something)

i think this is the crux of my not understanding re mansun! i can just about imagine liking them at the time, but 10 years on we are all older and wiser surely.

There's never been a better time to talk about Mansun, with Paolo Nutini dragging British music to a new low...

(Said with straight face. Oceansize rock)

Louis, I emailed you. Reply.

Oceansize are a band who combine metal, post-rock and electronica, with a 3-guitar attack and effects pedals to die for. They are worth checking out. Honestly.

with Paolo Nutini dragging British music to a new low...

Paolo Nutini's parents own a very good chip shop where I have been often known to buy my lunch when I am on my break from work and don't give a toss about grease and spots and my weight. I realise this doesn't excuse his music (but it's better than James Blunt, if damning with faint praise is any consolation to him), but I can't bring himself to hate him entirely.

Mansun, on the other hand, were terrific. Classic, totally.

i knew this would be a L***s J****r thread revive

No shit.

Louis Jagger and Paul Draper are now friends. 11:45pm

Paul Draper
is looking for the new sound like the mighty boosh!
Updated 4 hours ago

Good grief LJ is the second friend I have in common with Paul Draper. I'm so ashamed.

think my ex snogged paul draper one time.

when she was, you know, 15.

P4EDO DRAPER SHAME

Groups include:

Paul Draper Chinese Group
Bring back Mansun!!!!
Fans of Dominic Chad
Mansun appreciation society (aka lets start the worlds smallest FB group)
Come back Mansun and Draper
Paul Draper Official

poor guy

I guess he must be now; it's been a while. If he wants the royalites to start flowing again he should lobby for some Mansun tracks to be included on the soundtrack to upcoming BBC1 time travel cop series Jump They Say.

ROYALTIES morelike

Royal-ites

No, that was the Brotherhood of Man.

If you sing "Being a Girl" in a stupid voice, it does become a bog standard Franz track.
-- Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Friday, 30 June 2006 10:56 (1 year ago) Link

^^^REAL TALK

the only mansun fan i've ever met is a terrible, terrible cunt

the only mansun fan i've ever met is an internet legend

Yr ex-girlfriend is an internet legend?

naw, i don't think she was a big fan rly.

im talking about louis.

So anyway. Plus bonus Kula Shaker trashing.

http://www.vanyaland.com/2013/11/15/paul-draper-britpop-band-mansun-california-rapper-mansun-face-twitter-dazzling-results/

I thought paolo nutini had one okay song

good-natured beefs that result in potential collaboration are the future, i've seen it

boggling at the fact that Draper has a blue tick on his twitter account.

i just can't get through the solo album. so much clattery, so much singy, too much something. I love the work he did on the Anchoress album but I'm not enjoying the work she did on this.

Just listening to this for the first time. Don't Poke The Bear is one of the worst openers I've heard in a long time. I know his voice was always an acquired taste but that is such a horrible vocal.

I'm listening to the album for the first time right now, still on "Don't Poke the Bear", and yeah, I was pretty into it until the vocal came in. Definitely a Bold Choice.

this is better than i expected

pvmic

i expected it to be bad tbf

pvmnic

He could have followed Six with this album. Nothing quite as good as I Can Only Disappoint U, though

I'm going to listen to ATTACK OF THE GREY LANTERN tonight.

is he not #cancelled now

nah he was a pathetic ass but idk if 'drunkenly propositioning your tourmate on fbook chat' is full-cancel territory. like, obv v shitty but yellow card and 'do better' imo

Paul Draper: ex-Mansun frontman denies stalking musician Catherine Anne Davies https://t.co/tzHjmCYadO

— Guardian culture (@guardianculture) December 12, 2022

a pattern has emerged :(

no excuse at all but he is fucked in the head and needs help as well as censure/punishment

honestly fuck him anyway tho, not gonna let this ruin Six but fuck relistening to his recent solo stuff (which was awful recriminatory bollocks anyway)

CAD and I are FB friends and she's posted obliquely about this over the years on her personal account, but didn't know the extent of it, and I have no reason to think she is anything other than utterly sincere and he is an absolute cunt

well as i say (as my post before the jump demonstrates), this is not a first offence!

he did not 'do better'

Somehow he and his lawyers blocked the story Laura Snapes had been working on for a while where she had talked to some of his victims. I'm glad he's finally getting called out in public. He's an awful human being and I doubt I'll listen to Mansun again.

There's more? Ugh

As I say though, I tend to forgive the art more than the artist, especially if the art long pre-dates the awful behaviour. You will prise Six from my cold dead hands etc, but Draper now? The wolves can have him

He seems to have gone massively downhill in recent years. I liked his first solo album, but fuck knows what has happened to him

i believe CAD wrote a lot of that first solo album so maybe that's part of the issue.

That 'Things People Want' song sounded like a lost single from Mansun at their best.
Strange to think just a few years down the line, everything is now in the bin, completely