Britpop Boppers: is ANYONE listening anymore?
I’m pretty sure that it’s seasonal. In fact, I’m utterly convinced that Britpop heavyweights like Oasis, Primal Scream and The Charlatans all have some sort of cosmic affinity; a sonic menstrual cycle if you will (and I wish you wouldn’t, because that sounds disgusting) so that they release new material all at the same time.
It might be one, two or even three years between releases but, when the moon is on the cusp of entering Bore-us and the stars are so aligned, they each decide to return to Earth, feast on human flesh and release repetitive gumpf.
Normally, they prop up their latest album release with a string of festival appearances. Primal Scream are dab hands at second billing a rock festival, running through “Rocks” and a couple of numbers off Screamadelica and then shoehorning in some new track about Calamity Jane or something. ‘Hang on’ the crowd mew and bleat, ‘this is new; baah, whass this? Bah, Baaah.”
(sigh) I suppose my beef is this: JESUS CHRIST, who ACTUALLY cares?!?
Did anyone see Primal Scream on The Culture Show the other day? It was possibly the most pointless three and a half minutes of my rather tedious little life. That’s not to say that the music was that bad (I mean it was terrible, but that’s beside the point) it was just the archetype of the ‘same old same old’.
Bobby Gillespie was doing his weasily best at the microphone, slurring the old Madchester trivialities, whilst Mani was bobbing about in the background with the custom trinity: loafers, cream coloured jeans and a Ben Sherman. Back stage it must be like an episode of Pinky and the Brain:
Mani: What are we going to do tonight Bobby?
Bobby: The same thing we do every night Mani: mediocre pub rock bollocks.
Then there’s The Charlatans- hang on, they were on this series of The Culture Show as well (I hope this is cock up rather than conspiracy). Anyway, whasshisname Burgess is now sporting some sort of Warhol cut and committing the same sort of fragile beige guff over the same sort of ‘trippy’ Rickenbacker guitar lines. Yawn, yawn yawnnnnnnnzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Then of course there’s Oasis who I think the world stopped listening to precisely when that clock chimed nine on the inside of the Be Here Now album cover; so what’s that… about 11 years ago? Still, they’ve got a little further to go before they start encroaching on the length of Bob Geldof’s undead career.
Jesus wept.
What really gets my goat on this whole thing has nothing to do with age or genre or anything like that, it’s the complete artlessness of the their exploits.
And what’s worse is that they even seem to have some sort of nauseating pride in their dopey steadfastness. Otherwise how else would one account for the unfathomable insistence of Liam Gallagher to sporadically come out with seriously uninteresting tosh like “We’re a rock’n'roll band” and “we’re gonna make a good old old fashioned rock’n'roll album” I mean whasssthatabout Liam?? Because it seems to me like you’re promising to churn out a load of tired, uninspired balls… well, actually, I take that back because that’s exactly what Don’t Believe the Truth felt like. Oh, and just out of interest – can anyone think of a worse or more boring name for an album than Don’t Believe the Truth? It’s just utter stool water isn’t it.
So there you have it. Primal Scream’s heroically titled Beautiful Future was released just 10 days ago, on the 21st July. The Charlatans foray into the world of digitalism came when You Cross My Path was released just before the summer and Oasis’s outstandingly spiritual Dig Out Your Soul is due on general release from the 6th October.
I for one will be counting down the sleeps.
