half man half biscuit: classic or dud

I cant remember any songs from Bisodol except for "Tommy Walsh's Eco house" and "Excavating Rita"

"Trouble Over Bridgewater" and "Cammell Laird Social Club" were career highpoints imo

Trouble Over Bridgwater is the high mark among high marks imo

You'll get nothing like The Ballad Of Climie Fisher or Gubba Look-a-Likes on the new album, is all I'll say

Maybe this is a concept album about becoming a crotchety old git?

an anti-cocaine song strikes me as a little gauche by their standards

no legit lols yet

some of the songs on the first half sound like fairly standard chuggy early 90s Amerindie

I'll prob grow to like it

it has grown on me slightly - certainly better than Offal

it IS a concept album about becoming a crotchety old git - but I think deliberately

i couldn't get with Offal at all, but although this is pretty underwhelming compared to the album you've all been entirely correctly listing here, i've been enjoying it. moderately. the chugging is hard to avoid. Harsh Times in Umberstone Covert is a favourite i think. quite touching.

Geraldine [continuing a good line in touching HMHB women's names)

...don't be so self-conscious.
what became of the carefree you?
the one that would whistle to
throbbing gristle through
harsh times in Umberstone covert,
scoffing at the notion of a shoulder to cry on,
the very thought of a rock to rely on.
astonishing therefore to look at you now,
bitter with the gall,
reaching for the mainland (?).
i will mend you,
and i will tend to you,
take it as read,
with a needle and thread,
when you are falling apart at the seams,
i will make at that stitch in time."

and i must admit dad laughs at

[i]sour-faced, she picked up the gherkins,
saw christ in Dorothy Perkins,
oh geraldine we were so laissez-faire,
every other day was a non-sequitur:
hadron collider,
who's there?
knock knock.

the initial riff for every time a bell rings is v attractive as well, and again, though it doesn't quite hit the mark - i mean stuff like 'artisan gossip' brings its own embarrassment (the gaucheness DJ Mencap was talking about) - it's hard to argue with 'get your hedge cut, get your fucking hedge cut, stop meeting friends and cut your hedge'.

i mean in these pied times, i'll take what i'm given. almost wondering about going back to Offal, so to speak.

lol i was reading Barthes while listening to this on the tube, and felt this was very Nigel Blackwell:

but, underneath this discourse whose argument and whose approach I just presented, it seems to me that today i hear, in fleeting moments, another music.

have come around to the first 10 tracks of this album tbh - it's less funny or varied than previous albums but it has an elegiac heft

should end with 'every time a bell rings' though - the last three tracks are entirely superfluous, rising to irritating

a better HMHB song than anything theyve released in the last few years imo (ok it doesnt sound like them really but the lyrics express a similar suburban disdain)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_tGKd3egWI

That is closer to The Pre-New's vibe tbh - you must hear their two albums if you haven't

ooh featuring ex-members of Earl Brutus

The Pre New is good. I never saw Earl Brutus but did catch the Pre New at a festival about 8 years ago

Just discovered 'National Shite Day', truly a work whose time has come.

//////////////shawty got poll poll poll poll poll poll poll (part I: 2008 TRAX)\\\\\\\

this actually happened :)

back when it was 25 points for a #1, etc etc

anyway, pour one out for Stringy Bob

Great stuff, probably only time HMHB has featured on an ILM poll. If Coldwar Steve isn't a fan I'd be amazed.

The Doors/Floyd advert is icing on the cake for me.

the Stringy Bob verse is probably my pick for best verse of lyrics since the turn of the millennium tbh, it is literature

embrace the margin

Btw I'm from the US but I lived in Liverpool for 7 years -- some of it good, some of it bad, but it was probably worth it to be able to understand HMHB lyrics about northwest UK television broadcasting.

Good interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-em8_hueZI

Kinda weird to turn on Sky News the other morning and hear Sky's business presenter, Ian King, bantering away with Kay Burley about his favourite band, Half Man Half Biscuit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIl_NDp-U0M

new album 'the voltarol years' feb 18th

Was recently thinking they're due

on a fairly drunk listen this seems like the best for a while.

omg it's out!!!!

me Tarzan, you June

okay this hasn't been prime material, but In A Suffolk Ditch is righting that

a CARDIACS SHOUTOUT wtf :D

“cowslips and celandine” is lovely

second half of this album has been absolutely top-tier, weirdly a very backloaded record imo

the last two tracks are amazing

nigel leaning hard into the 'lovely' at times here, extremely elegiac and beautiful yes

On second thoughts, this really is all prime stuff. He's getting so good at character studies

What's an 'onion batch'?

a type of bread

As seen on Taskmaster

https://i.imgur.com/vkCo9bG.jpeg