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Rock & Pop: So, Where Have You Lot All Been Hiding?
By: Simon Price - The Independent - London
August 25th 2002 1:26pm
JJ72 Barfly LONDON Manic Street Preachers V2002 CHELMSFORD Saint Etienne ICA LONDON Whenever a young band, after their initial burst of activity and
attention, disappears off the radar for 18 months, it's natural to
become a little suspicious. You wonder if, rather than working
diligently on their next magnum opus, they've actually been doing
little more than growing their hair. When I catch my first glimpse of JJ72's Mark Greaney tonight, I
have my doubts. His bog-brush spikes have grown out into a long,
boyish blond fringe, giving him the appearance of Brad Pitt in, er,
Meet Joe Black. Meanwhile, gazelle-necked, implausibly beautiful
bassist Hilary Woods increasingly resembles the young Ornella Muti,
and although I can't see drummer Fergal Matthews from my vantage
point, I'm sure that, at the very least, he's doing a decent Robert
Mitchum. There are unconfirmed reports of a new, fourth member
called Toby MacFarlaine, but, if he exists, he's obscured by a large
pillar. Last time we saw JJ72, they were superstars in waiting, seemingly
poised to "do a Muse" and ascend to arena status. After retreating
to Dublin to record the proverbial Difficult Second Album, where
they'll go from here is anyone's guess. Tonight's show, a secret
affair intended to showcase the album, I To The Sky, is mainly aimed
at impressing the suits from the record company (or, I should say,
the Carhartts - contrary to cliche, no one actually wears suits any
more, just as no advertising exec has worn a ponytail since 1992).
The relatively tiny Barfly is packed with industry movers and
shakers. The problem with movers and shakers, of course, is that,
ironically, they don't actually do any moving or shaking. Luckily, a
smattering of actual fans down the front create some sort of
atmosphere, and "October Swimmer" - still their finest song - gets a
genuine scream. Introducing "Formulae" ("the comeback single", he says, doing
that annoying inverted commas thing with his fingers), Greaney looks
slightly nervy, but above the music biz chitter-chatter, the I To
The Sky material sounds just fine. There's a new lightness and open-
ness to their sound, reflected even in Greaney's choice of attire (a
crisp white shirt instead of 2000's head-to-toe black), although the
serrated guitars and scorching vocals remain intact. There's
something insulting to the intelligence about the traditional
critical shorthand which says "raw-throated voice equals passion",
but there's undeniably a certain quality to Greaney's vocal style
which adds a conviction and believability to his words. One minute
he sings in a slightly girly bleat, the next, without warning, he
breaks into a gale-force scream. If he carries on at this rate, he's
gonna do to his larynx what Roy Keane did to Alf Inge Haaland's
kneecap, but that's between him and his throat specialist. Last time Manic Street Preachers played the V festival,
headlining the main stage, they were arguably the biggest rock band
in Britain, and they previewed a forthcoming single, "Masses Against
the Classes", which was set to become the first new No 1 of the 21st
century. Two years is a long time in rock'n'roll, and after the
disappointing sales of last year's Know Your Enemy album, they
return on the smaller NME stage (although apparently, it's by
choice). The V festivals have always been middle-of-the-road, middlebrow
and middle class (walking to the NME stage entails braving the
strains of Alanis Morissette), and the Manics don't do anything to
scare the horses. Habitual agent provocateur Wire is quiet tonight - no remarks
about "building a flyover through this shithole", no wishing death
upon his fellow musicians, or mocking Royals for not knowing how to
die properly - and when he selects a new bass guitar, it isn't
because he's trashed the previous one, but because the strap had
come loose. Instead, it's up to a newly-buff James Dean Bradfield -
looking like himself circa 1994 (but with better hair) - to take the
role of cheerleader, whipping up a chorus of "aaahs" before
"Masses", and informing us, to some surprise, that "A Design For
Life" is "a song about fucking". There's no new material tonight - that will wait until November -
so it's purely a hits set, offering a taster of the forthcoming
Forever Delayed collection. Releasing a greatest hits CD may suggest
a full stop, or at least a winding-down of a band's career, but word
persistently reaches my ears that the Manics have recorded enough
songs for a new album. The end may be nigh, but I'd love to believe
that the most vital band of the last decade have it in them to do it
one more time. To the inattentive eye, it might seem that Saint Etienne have
also vanished off the radar, and that the imminent Finisterre, a
sixth "proper" album in 11 years, doesn't show much of a work rate.
There is, however, a whole secret history of fan club-only releases,
soundtracks for American indie movies and rarities compilations,
which probably makes Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell the
hardest-working band in showbiz. "Finisterre" is a word which resonates from childhood, one of
those names you would only hear on the Shipping Forecast as you were
twiddling the dial in search of voices from Radio Luxembourg,
communist propaganda about grain harvests and US imperialism from
Mockba. It means, literally, "land's end", or if you prefer, "the
end of the earth". In Saint Etienne's case, it might, specifically, mean the end of
Britain. Anyone turning up to the ICA in search of the uncomplicated
pop kicks of "He's On The Phone" or "You're In A Bad Way" will have
been surprised at how small-"p" political the band has become.
Stanley and Wiggs have developed a keen eye for the rapacity and
heartlessness of Blair's Britain. You hear it first on "Heart Failed
In A Back Of A Taxi", which targets football club asset strippers:
"Sold the ground to the PLC/ Move the club out to Newbury/ Sod the
fans and their family..." After a couple of hits to sugar the pill -
"Sylvie" and the ever-sublime, epoch-defining "Nothing Can Stop Us",
on which Cracknell whispers lovestruck pillowtalk over that old
Dusty backbeat - the micro-politics are back. A run-through of the
Finisterre album is accompanied by a specially made film which
lingers on the bleakest images of London, the city with which Saint
Etienne are so famously in love. We see spotty, blank-eyed youths on
BMXs, bored security guards, but mostly, no humans at all, just
derelict properties and signposts speaking the language of
prohibition: "NO BALL GAMES", "ANTI CLIMB PAINT" and, ironically,
"OPEN TO THE PUBLIC" on a food shack which is firmly shuttered and
bolted. Meanwhile, a new song, "Amateur", turns to suburbia ("now a piece
of Farnborough is looking like Tirana") and specifically
carcinogenic mobile phone aerials: "Pretty fast, he put a mast on
the neighbouring flats/ A little girl called Jill/ Will become very
ill/ But that is years away/ So who gives a hey..." Saint Etienne's
greatest value has been in consistently proving that the banal
equation, Pop equals Stupid, Rock equals Clever, is for morons who
can only think in well-worn tramlines, and Finisterre is Stanley,
Wiggs and Cracknell at their most POP. The challenge Saint Etienne
throw down remains the same as ever: do you believe in magic?
(C) 2002 The Independent - London. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved
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