Ok. So, Insecure Men’s name may not be particularly inspiring (although on further reflection, it is rather good).  But live these young men are if not a revelation in the biblical sense at least incredible in their own very sweet way.

My initial response to their debut album was one of contemptuous dismissal. Why the fuck was this banal cruise round the Med on a Saga holiday music being so lauded?

Yet something drew me back and after half a week spent in its cheesy company I have seen sense and predict that Saul Adamczewski and Ben Romans Hopcraft have crafted a piece of work that will be one of the years most insidious and lovable albums of 2018.

So live, can they cut it?

An affirmative YES based on this performance at a rammed Bodega. From the get go with nary a guitar riff in sight we are singing along, swaying and dancing badly. The opening number, Cliff has Left the Building, has us all captivated, sounding like The Beach Boys headed by Syd Barrett.

There are so many influences going on here. Early Velvets and a touch of glam rock on the startling Mekong Glitter. This is a song introduced by Saul as a tune about sex tourism. We all whooped (apart from the politically correct misery arse who had a go at my mate).

Teenage Toy is lovely and the new single, I Don’t Wanna Dance, ironically made us dance. They played the whole album although on a slightly personal note I missed one of my favourites, Ulster, when I went for a pee. But apart from that, no quibbles.

They are visual treat as well, sartorial to the max, baggy golfing trousers white socks, a beret and a pleated grey dress. The music, the look (like an explosion in a Dexys Midnight Runners’ factory) as well as the the arch and very knowing lyrics, combine to create something quite subversive.

I am sure the crowd who attended tonight will be gifted with the foreknowledge that they saw Insecure Men in a small club in 2018 before the band played a blinder in a rather large field in Somerset in 2019.

Ladies and gentlemen I give you the next Pulp.

Words by John Haylock, pictures by Debs Anderson.

More information about Insecure Men can be found here.

What makes a good songwriter? For some it’s the ability to tell a good story, for others it’s a turn of phrase that succinctly captures a common emotion. For some. such as Andy Partridge, one of XTC’s chief songwriters, it is simply to draw inspiration from your own life and community.

In a  feature  in The Guardian in 2005 Partridge is quoted as saying:

“I can’t write mid-Atlantic airport lounge music. I can’t talk about my hot babe with her leather and whip or meeting my cocaine dealer. I like to write about what’s going on around the town.”

In a nutshell, he writes about what he knows. This frees his work from pretension and gives his lyrics genuine meaning. As the article later alludes, the example of Partridge puts the meaningless drivel of the likes of Coldplay to shame. Chris Martin needs to have a wander around town more like Partridge if he ever hopes to gain a song writing reputation to match his bank balance.

We’ve been having a good listen to the lyrics and construction of some of our favourite tracks recently and have decided to attempt one of our Top Tens looking at the art of the great songwriter and those whose lyrics inspire and amaze us. We’ve set some ground rules. They have to broadly fit into the indie or alternative musical world we cover, which unfortunately rules out Kate Bush. They also have to be an active song writer who is still releasing. This  rules out Partridge,  as XTC’s last album was more than a decade ago.

Andy Partridge

In our list we’ve some who not only write great lyrics but are expert song constructors. For some their best work is behind them but they are still plugging away. Meanwhile, for others they seemingly get better with age. Others in our list really give thought to the art of songwriting and take delight in helping fans and music lovers understand the process better.

We’ve also cheated a little. It is in fact a top 11; we couldn’t separate our top two choices so decided to give them equal first.  So with all that in mind here’s the first part of  our top ten (okay, its 11 really) song writers. To view part two of this list click here.

10. Darren Hayman

As singer and songwriter with 1990s act Hefner Darren Hayman already had a good reputation on the UK indie scene for producing strong lyrics and well worked songs. Good Heart, which made our Top Ten Tearjerkers list, is a perfect example of this. In this track Hayman tries and fails to convince his lover to stay with lines such as

You were just there, in the right place. You smooth out the wrinkles on my face

But arguably his best work has come in recent years, during a productive and purplest of patches that includes two albums about his native Essex (Pram Town, Essex Arms), contributions to the Vostok 5 space travel art and music project, bass playing for another great modern song writer Robert Rotifer in his band Rotifer, an album of piano ballads (Ship’s Piano) and his  January Songs project, where he wrote, released and recorded a song a day in January 2011. He is set to release an album about British lidos and Essex witch trials.

Darren Hayman at the Vostok 5 exhibition, 2011 (pic by Dorian Rogers)

It is his January  songs project that is perhaps his most impressive in terms of songwriting, in which he gave his audience a fascinating insight into the song writing process and came up with some superb lyrics and song writing that made a mockery of the short time he spent on them. I Know I Fucked Up, sung by Allo Darlin’s Elizabeth Morris and My Dirty Widow are among our highlights.

We drove to Barcelona on the road along the coast
The sun got in my eyes, we careered side to side
and now all I hear is the knocking of her heels on my casket

If you see my dirty widow
Tell her it’s ok
Tell her I don’t mind

A final mention goes to one of his songs on Vostok 5, A Little Arrow and a Little Squirrel, about the Russian  dogs Belka and Strelka, the first space dogs to return  to earth alive. Its line

“In a cage made of metal and glass, two beating hearts, beating too fast,”

perfectly captures the perilous, unusual situation these animals’ faced and shows a willingness by Hayman to write about the most leftfield of subject matter. It is among many highlights in a great songwriting career for Hayman that is showing no signs of letting up.

9.Luke Haines

Luke Haines is a different character from most of the people on this list, he has worked hard to commit commerical suicide many times in his career and he is as well known for being bitter as he is for great songwriting. But great songwriting is what he does, and it is something he did with his previous bands, The Auteurs and Black Box Recorder, and is something he continues to do today as a solo artist.

Looking back at his earliest songs, on the Mercury Prize nominated New Wave, he seems romantic and almost whistful. Jump forward to Now I’m A Cowboy and the lyrics get more sophisticated and literary with his best known song ‘Lenny valentino’ opening;

‘There were mourners on the street of every shape and size
The motorcade came down from Redondo
Assassins on the corner tried to throw you a line
You dirty-mouth comic Rodolfo’

Luke Haines

The third Auteurs album (and possibly his career defining recording) After Murder Park cranks up the bile considerably opening with the line;

“When you cut your lover slack you’ll get a fucking monster back”

To be more accurate, the single version of the song, ‘Light Aircraft On Fire’, featured the f-bomb, the album version was cleaned up, a rather perverse back-to-front decision.

His work with Black Box Recorder was (briefly) more successful and well received by the critics, but no less barbed,

“Life is unfair, kill yourself or get over it”

went the chorus to their single release ‘Child Psychology’.

These days Haines is a critically acclaimed author, two volumes published of his musical memoirs, and his music no longer infects the mainstream. That isn’t to say that he has lost his songwriting skills, far from it. His latest album about wrestling in the 1970s features some of his best songwriting, and is a surprisingly warm and nostalgic record.

8. Kristin Hersh

Kristin Hersh has always existed just inside the fringes of American indie music scene. Critically acclaimed and successful without getting quite the same level of attention as her contemporaries such as The Pixies. Her air of quiet oddness coupled with an unpredictable performance style, ranging from whispered to screaming, marked her out as something a little bit special.

Kristin Hersh

Few artists have managed to preserve a range of styles so successfully for so long. Want sprightly indie rock? Then the Throwing Muses can supply it with songs like Counting Backwards. Feel like some delicate pop music? Then Kristin Hersh solo performing Your Ghost will be right up your street. And if you’d like something a bit rough and heavy then 50 Foot Wave performing Clara Bow should fit your mood. The latter being her lyrical style in microcosm, an evocative mix of delicate and violent imagery.

Whether it was soaking in your poppy tea
Or your southern hospitality
Your voice has a singsong quality
And bones were made to be broken
Bones were made to be broken

This wide variety of musical styles is coupled with some great lyrical themes which leap between the personal and the surreal. She is one of the most raw and personal lyricists with her mental health, relationships and even the loss of custody of her first son being the subjects of her songs.

More than 25 years into her recording career she is every bit as exciting a performer as she was in the early days of Throwing Muses. Her perfomance at The Breeders ATP in 2009 was testament to that as she rocked as hard as any other performer that weekend.

7. David Gedge

Admittedly The Wedding Present and former Cinerama frontman David Gedge is a bit of a one trick pony. The poor chap has been singing about love and most notably loss for almost 30 years. So why is he on this list, you ask? If anything this obsession with the intricacies of relationships, of the highs and lows, the introspection, the guilt and jealousy, is his strength not his weakness, as his turns of phrase continue to resonate with audiences today.

David Gedge, Yeovil Orange Box, 2011 (pic by Joe Lepper)

Even on latest Wedding Present album Valentina, written during recent years of enjoyable touring for Gedge, he still manages the self-deprecating aside to suggest all is not well as “everything about my so called life is boring.” Across the years this trademark bittersweet lyrical style has hoovered up fans, who have stuck with him resolutely as their own loves and losses come and go. Among our highlights are the jealous rant of My Favourite Dress from 1987’s George Best with lines such a “It took six hours before you let me down, To see it all in a drunken kiss, A stranger’s hand on my favourite dress.”

Given the commercial and critical success of Pulp’s Brit pop defining run of 1990s albums, from 1994’s His n Hers to 1998’s This Is Hardcore, it’s hard to assess their many years of  work beforehand as anything other  than a comparative failure.

Started by teen Jarvis Coker and his friend Peter Dalton in 1978 the Sheffield band continued throughout the 1980s with Cocker assembling different musicians throughout the period and finding very little success at each turn.

Pulp in 1983

With this year marking the 20^th anniversary of their 1992 album Separations, Fire Records, their label though much of this period of failure, decided now is a good time to reissue the album in addition to their first two albums, It and Freaks

As one of the many that first heard Pulp when His n Hers came out I’m hearing these albums for the first time. My assumption had been that  a lack of  luck rather than talent  had stymied their search for success. Turns out though that in the case of It and Freaks success evaded them because quite simply they were not very good. Separations on the other hand shows that after more than a decade of try outs something had finally clicked and the Brit-popping Pulp sound we reminisce about today was born.

What is most striking about It is the lack of keyboards and its folk direction. It (1983) is a world away from the power and pop sensibility of Mercury Music nomination His n Hers. As a debut its pretty dire, with only the occasional flashes of the brilliance of later work. The major problem is Cocker’s voice. It’s just awful here, all nasally like a bad Morrisey impression. I’m sure in his head he thinks he sounds like Scott Walker. In reality on this and Freaks he sounds like the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band’s Vivian Stanshall singing about pink halves of drainpipes.

The songs too, while upbeat are largely forgettable. There’s no clever, bittersweet lyrics, no sweeping flourishes. Only opener My Lighthouse, co-written by Cocker and Simon Hinkler, who later left Pulp to join the Mission,  emerges with credibility.

They moved in a slightly harder direction with Freaks (1987) with a more traditional  and basic indie rock electric guitar, bass and drums feel to it.  It was to be no more successful for the band. Freaks is a real mess with Cocker still sounding like Stanshall and horribly out of tune in places, especially on I Want You. You’d think that would have been ironed out at the time. Opener Fairground is probably the worst track, at best a parody of the Wonderstuff and at worst a genuine attempt to recreate Spinal Tap’s Stonehenge in a fairground.  Masters of the Universe sounds like The Damned, but not in a good way.

Separations is the real find here for those that came to the band from the His n Hers or Different Class period. This is arguably the first recognisable Pulp album and one the cool kids with their finger on the pulse of new music in 1992 should have quite rightly held up proudly as their new favourite band.

Adding synths to the mix was a master stroke giving tracks such as Love is Blind a real identifiable Pulp sound. Cocker’s vocals have improved markedly as well and as a result tracks on the first half of the album such as Don’t You Want Me Anymore sounds credible and epic rather than laughable and sad. The placing of violin high in the mix also gives it a welcome difference to later, more successful albums and Freaks.  The second half descends a little into a kind of indie, acid house mix on tracks such as My Legendary Girlfriend, but the genre shift is not too glaring and the first half is so good it more than makes up for a weak finale to the album.

It and Freaks are worth buying for curiosity value, but for a genuinely good album Separations is the pick of this trio.

It (4/10)

Freaks (3/10)

Separations (8/10)

By Joe Lepper

There are some albums here you will have seen on similar lists before. But we’ve also opted for some obscurities with the aim of highlighting some different music for you to seek out.

We have been releasing this list ten at a time every Friday. We hope you enjoy this fifth instalment. The rest of the Top 100 can be found here.

50. Built To Spill – Keep it like a secret

Signing for a major label proved no bad thing for  Built to Spill. With some extra cash behind them this US band were clearly able to spend a lot of time getting their beautiful sprawling  guitar arrangements just right. On this 1999 album, which was their second for Warner Brothers, everything came together perfectly. Quality sprawling guitar sounds from frontman Doug Martsch coming at you from each speaker, brilliant hooks and all still with an alternative and independent edge, despite having the major label machine behind them. ‘Sidewalk’ is our standout on this collection of tight-as-you-like tracks as is the prog-rock-esque ‘Time Trap’. Other highlights are  ‘Carry the Zero’ and ‘Center of the Universe’, which were released as EPs.

49. The Kinks – Are The Village Green Preservation Society

This has proved to be the most contentious inclusion in our chart so far. The Kinks were a huge pop music success, one of the biggest acts of the 1960s, so what place do they have in an indie/alternative music chart? The hugely nostalgic Village Green Preservation Society sank like a stone on release in 1968 and didn’t spawn any hit singles. In contrast to this it has been a hugely influential album for alternative acts in the last 20 years. Album standout ‘Big Sky’ has been covered by Yo La Tengo as well as The Blue Aeroplanes, but the influence of the album goes further than that. It set the blueprint for a certain kind of Britishness that can be heard in albums by Madness, XTC, The Jam and Blur. Musically it is as inventive as anything that Ray Davies has produced through his career and the brilliant set of songs explains why this is the album of choice for Kink’s fans today.

48. The Fall – Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall

Picking an album by The Fall, out of the 27 released so far, was another tough choice in compiling our list. 1990’s Extricate has a special place in our hearts, as do more recent releases like  2010’s Your Future Our Clutter. But we’ve decided to narrow it down an era where we  first discovered them. An era in the mid 1980s, when thanks to the inclusion of leader Mark E Smith’s pop savvy wife Brix on guitar and production from John Leckie, they began achieving rare commercial and mainstream success. Ladies and gentleman we are proud to present 1984’s The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall. While the original vinyl version, with tracks such as the wonderful and bit frightening Lay of the Land, is great on its own the cassette and CD versions expanded the album further.  The inclusion of singles such as No Bulbs and C.R.E.E.P in these formats fit seamlessly among the album tracks and make this a great introduction to the band.

47. Calexico – Feast of Wire

Calexico were formed by the rhythm section from Howe Gelb’s Giant Sand and have produced a set of excellent albums mixing dusty border country with Mariachi sounds. Feast of Wire shows them upping the ante and has seen them described as the Tex-Mex Radiohead. There aren’t many similarities in the sound, but they do show a similar level of ambition and a desire to try out new sounds on the album. Waltz, country, jazz, electronica and, on ‘Not Even Stevie Nicks’, MOR pop all get an outing on the album and Morricone is clearly an influence on the arrangements. Despite the wealth of ideas and sounds it holds together perfectly as an album and stands as a high point in Calexico’s recording career.

46. Pretenders – Pretenders

After producing the Pretenders’ first single ‘Stop Your Sobbing’ in 1979 Nick Lowe decided against working with them again. He thought the new wave UK band fronted by American Chrissie Hynde, “wasn’t going anywhere”. Chris Thomas took over production duties for the band’s self titled debut and Lowe was proved woefully wrong as it achieved a Top 10 in the US Billboard charts and number one in the UK in 1980. Its success and inclusion in this list is not just because of great singles like ‘Brass in Pocket’, but also for its  ability to embrace a range of styles while sticking firmly to the band’s punk and new wave influences. From the reggae ‘Private Life’, to the hooky ‘The Wait’ through to the soulful ‘Lovers of Today’, this stunning debut’s variety is breathtaking.

45. The Afghan Whigs – Gentlemen

The Afghan Whigs time on the Sub Pop label and their penchant for R&B covers left them with the tag of being the early 90s token soul-grunge act. This label fails to take account of what an excellent rock and roll band they were, especially on their third album Gentlemen. Greg Dulli’s snarling vocals and dark lyrics fit perfectly with his bands punchy playing and the surprisingly ungrungey  production which Dulli handled himself. The album spawned three excellent singles ‘Gentelmen’, ‘Debonair’ and ‘What Jail Is Like’ all deserved to bring the band to a bigger audience but they and the album sold in modest numbers. In amongst the loud guitars and bluster is the beautifully sung (by Macy Mays) ‘My Curse’ which is the album’s standout track.

44.  Fugazi – Repeater

This first full length album from Fugazi shows the Washington DC band continue their mission to shelve their hardcore punk origins and search for new musical directions. Still with a punk heart through the vocals of singers ex Minor Threat frontman Ian Mackaye and former Rites of Spring member Guy Piciotto, the heartbeat of the band was the jazz rhythms of bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Canty, who combined expertly with Mackaye’s dampened guitar style. On Repeater Piciotto gained a greater influence on the music as the band experimented more with guitar feedback.  Repeater remains the best full album by the band. Tracks like ‘Merchandise’ and ‘Turnover’ are among the immediate highlights, but the subtlety of styles on tracks like ‘Brendan #1’ show a band at their peak enjoying breaking down the traditional barriers of straight edge and hardcore punk. Repeater sold in its hundreds of thousands, but the band resolutely shunned major label interest, carried on playing in small venues and stuck with Mackaye’s Dischord label throughout.

43. The Auteurs – New Wave

The Auteurs were closely linked with Suede and the emerging Brit-pop scene when New Wave was released in 1993. Anyone who has read lead Auteur Luke Haines’ hilarious memoirs ‘Bad Vibes’ will know that he was too arrogant, mean spirited and unstable to play the game and become the star that he believed he should be. New Wave was nominated for the Mercury prize and was one of the best records released that year. Haines was right about one thing, he is a superb songwriter and the album is brilliant track after brilliant track. ‘Show Girl’, ‘Don’t Trust The Stars’, ‘Starstruck’, ‘How Could I Be Wrong’ and ‘Idiot Brother’ are all examples of great melody and interesting insightful lyric writing. Haines would record several other great albums, but his first effort stands as the best.

42. Pulp – His n Hers

Pulp spent most of the ’80s in obscurity, gradually building up critical acclaim but never quite achieving success. With the release of their fourth album His ‘n’ Hers in 1994 that all changed. This is one of the great breakthrough albums of all time as tracks such as ‘Lipgloss’ and ‘Joyriders’  brought them to a huge mainstream audience and the band started to emerge as the key act  of the Britpop explosion. By their next album Different Class, with singles such as ‘Common People, Pulp’s popularity had gone stratospheric. But it is here on His ‘n’ Hers where for us they were at their peak. This is both musically and lyrically through the bittersweet and at times downright funny storytelling of frontman Jarvis Cocker. This is especially the case with our standout track on this album ‘Babies’.

41. Pavement – Slanted and Enchanted

Recorded by two Californian Fall fans Stephen Malkmus and Scott ‘Spiral Stairs’ Kannberg (with the help of anarchic drummer/engineer Gary Young) Slanted and Enchanted was the debut album by a band that would come to be one of the most important American acts of the 1990s. It is a lo-fi album, scratchy abrasive and hissy, but a collection of great songs sits behind the static. With songs like ‘Summer Babe’, ‘Trigger Cut’ and ‘Here’ (an oft covered classic) it demonstrated the quirky pop skills that would become a feature of their albums, but it also retained the esoteric charms of their early singles.

Compiled by Joe Lepper and Dorian Rogers

This week it was announced that Pulp are to reform and play at the Wireless festival. So far, so ho hum. With this news the rumour mill kicked into action and suggestions that they might play at Glastonbury started to spread. Exciting stuff?

I canvassed the opinion of a few people I know who have Glastonbury tickets, and they seemed pretty unmoved by the news. Still reeling with the disappointment of the headliner rumours (U2 and Coldplay sheesh) they were not going to have their enthusiasm renewed by this latest piece of gossip.

Pulp - in the past where they belong

I’m always torn by bands getting back together. In general I think it is a bad idea. It destroys a lot of the romance and magic, and in most cases the band becomes a cash generating greatest hits machine. In some cases it works (Madness have released an album that sits up with their best work from first time around) but in most cases it ends up disappointing.

I’m a sucker for my favourite bands coming back, and loved seeing the Pixies and Pavement second time around, but a part of me wishes they’d stayed dead. The memory of them was better than the reality in lots of ways.

Pulp’s reunion is an example of a different phenomenon. The long term strategy of a band to regain lost credibility by splitting up and coming back after a long enough period that people think you were still cool. James did it and more recently Suede. Neither band ended because of in-fighting or “creative differences”, it was lack of interest in their records that killed them.

Nobody liked A New Morning (or anything that Brett Anderson has done since for that matter) but 8 years later all is forgotten and they can be the band that sold a load of copies of Coming Up all over again.

I liked Pulp, they did some great pop singles and were unlike any other band from their era. However, in a career spanning three decades they only released two albums of any real significance. With Different Class they reached their pinnacle but This Is Hardcore and We Love Life alienated the fans to the point where they couldn’t even sell copies of their greatest hits collection.

The latest (non)news is that Alan McGee thinks that Oasis will definitely reform at some point. Now, despite what I say above, I think Pulp will be good live. They have enough great songs in their catalogue to make a decent set and Jarvis Cocker is one of the best front men of his generation. A reformed Oasis live would be terrible. Their back catalogue is largely awful (not even they like half their albums) and they are one of the worst live acts this country has produced. Noel Gallagher has some wit about him, but a showman he is not. The rest of the band don’t have a personality between them. That just leaves front man Liam. His swaggering sneering face routine got tired decades ago (and was a lazy John Lydon rip-off to begin with), and given his appalling live vocals he doesn’t have any other tricks to back him up. Evidence of how bad they got can be seen below with a clip of them playing at Glastonbury 2004.

My advice to Pulp (or any other bands that had a brief but brilliant moment in the limelight) is to stay dead, preserve the magic. Oasis, on the other hand can do what they like, they never had any magic to start off with.

Brit-pop legends Pulp, who are reforming for a string of summer gigs next year, are the latest act in the frame to headline Glastonbury 2011.

Organiser Michael Eavis has booked all three headliners, with Coldplay, U2 and Prince thought to be the acts set to play at the event.

However, bookmakers have now slashed the odds on Pulp performing at the event and taking a headline slot. William Hill have slashed the odds from 10/1 to 5/2 this week.

Pulp

Pulp, who formed in Sheffield, previously headlined the event in 1995.

“The amount of money that we have seen has been quite astonishing and it would lead us to think that a headline slot is certainly within reach for the Sheffield rockers,” said William Hill spokesman Joe Crilly.

Others rumoured to be headlining the event include Take That, who have recently reunited with original member Robbie Williams.