Weird / unusual / extraordinary Britpop

xpost sorry, was in the train tunnel hours ago and that didn’t go through

Jack felt to me like an extension of the vibes established by (especially) The Auteurs and (pre-Coming Up) Suede. I suppose that by the time their first album came out in 1996 that sort of lineage no longer felt like part of capital-B "Britpop", but it's not like the album isn't pretty pop at times (thinking of e.g. the "la la la" chorus in "Wintercomessummer").

It's also interesting how stretches of the album feel like they anticipate Pulp's We Love Life.

a friend pointed out a few years ago that luke haines looks like grandad off only fools and horses, esp with that hat, and i wish to pass it on

xp no doubt because Anthony Reynolds was as much a Scott Walkerphile as Jarvis Cocker.

So much so that he wrote a book:
https://www.amazon.com/Impossible-Dream-story-Walker-Brothers/dp/1906002258

Yeah I'm not at all surprised that Reynolds is a Walker fan - I was really commenting on the similarity between Jack and (late era) Pulp underscoring the arbitrariness/rubbery nature of what counts or does not count as "britpop"

Genuinely wish Loz Hardy would do a memoir, seems very unlikely though

Vaguely germane to this thread: William Potter from Cud wrote the BritPop comic GEEZER, drawn by the mighty Philip Bond, and it is quite good!
https://www.offregister.press/geezer

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/apr/15/babybird-youre-gorgeous-bikinis-thong

Guy from Babybird is a nasty right winger but here he is with his experimental feminist song

worst big song of the britpop era along with good enough by Dodgy.

Just reading this interview:

https://thequietus.com/interviews/dave-pearce-flying-saucer-attack-interview/

"In retrospect, of course that was the first attempted Britpop manoeuvre by the system."

The notion of Britpop as music made up by the state.

shed seven? mi5 morelike

Makes sense tbh

Someone I don't know on Facebook tried to convince me Babybird was "as far away from Britpop as it gets", then posted a song that was kind of an indie ballad with slightly creepy lyrics to prove his point

Also if you look up Babybird on Facebook, as I just did because I was trying to find the aforementioned conversation, it's just post after post of Babybirdbloke bitterly complaining about how no one cares about his music anymore despite his prolific, unfailing genius

he put razor blades in the ice cream
sha la la la
sha la la la la la la

didn't he eagerly defend roisin last year? i get they've probably been chums since her sheffield days but i haven't really wanted to listen to him since

i suppose this isn't the place is it

He was also posting/retweeting a lot of Islamophobic stuff recently but in the past few days he seems to have deactivated his twitter account.

He was an interesting-ish artist making weird lo-fi records that sometimes got played on mark & lard in 95/96, then he had The Hit and put out a few more to try to chase it (I think Good Night is probably his best pop single but these things do not work logically) then for the next quarter of a century he's been unsuccessfully trying to chase this idea of being a pop star which he is obviously not cut out for and has driven him into this hole. not feeling that sorry for him but ultimately this is a variety of brainworms.

I went to see Babybird in 1995 because a friend wanted to check them out, I had no idea who they were. didn't like it much tbh. weird support bands, there was a metal band then a kind of jokey Half Man Half Biscuit/Sultans of Ping type band, think I liked them best

As an American they seemed… really really British, like real hardcore Britpop for British people

I remember Mark Radcliffe being disappointed in him for working with The Lightning Seeds, which from the perspective of 2024 is simply a bizarre opinion to have.

he put razor blades in the ice cream
sha la la la
sha la la la la la la

― Deflatormouse, Tuesday, May 21, 2024 5:34 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

that was literally the song