Great Lost Albums
Earl Brutus
Your Majesty, We Are Here (Deceptive)
The freshest forgotten albums of yesteryear. Not the usual fawned over suspects (usually due for re-release and consequent advertising revenue) but albums that ‘net-trawlers and second-hand shop aficionados may come across and should snap up NOW…
Jim Paranoias Recommends
All great bands are born in pubs. But only truly great bands go the distance; sticking doggedly to that slurred manifesto, that ‘fucking come and have a go’ mentality, and the purity of inspiration that can only be attained in a moment of booze-fuelled clarity. So it must have been with Earl Brutus. Where else but at the yellowing fag-end of some hateful all-dayer would the melding acid house, glam, krautrock, electro and the Fall have seemed like a good idea? Where else but in a world wherein every night ends with the sound of breaking glass, police sirens and 303s galloping down the high street (as does virtually every track here) could such a cantankerous a racket as this album seem like a worthy addition to pop music?
Yes, this certainly isn’t the kind of Great Lost Album you can slip into as you would a pair of old comfy slippers. In fact, playing the album in the home is akin to that maddening, sickly feeling you get settling down for the night in some hitherto uncharted suburban boozer, only to discover the table next to you, and indeed the pub in its entirety, is populated by complete psychopaths and angry lunatic losers.
Staffed by two warlocks, an alcoholic zombie shouting at himself, a bucking sweating rodeo rider of a guitarist, a large man in an ill-fitting- tucked-in-jeans-and-cream-jacket combo and a slight oriental chap in a kagoul – exclusively employed to beat frothing tins of lager above his head on stage – Earl Brutus were far from your conventional glam/synth six piece. Their live ‘show’ was as visceral and threatening as it was hilarious and shambolic and no expense was spared when it came to production. Piss poor pyrotechnics would go off at random intervals throughout the set, rotating signage that you don’t see at Petrol Stations anymore reading ‘music/chips’ littered the stage and each member had their own name spelt out in a Kraftwerk style UV light box. Coupled with their resident lager chucker and head banger Shin-Yu the whole set acted as a visual representation of the band’s seemingly disparate reference points.
You wouldn’t think it would work, but it does and the album sounds as vital and dangerous today as it did on its release in 1996. In the main it’s all pounding Glitter band drums, barrelling acid lines and leery glam riffs yet it’s stuffed with little flourishes and flashes of side-splitting genius. There’s some woeful scratching in ‘Shrunken Head’, a vocodered “ENG-ER-LAND” chant at the end of ‘Blind Date’, some preposterous machine gun-like rack toms throughout ‘Life’s Too Long’ and a couple of inspired set pieces such as the faultless and unfathomably bleak Pet Shop Boys pastiche ‘On Me Not In Me’
Lyrically the album runs the gamut of booze related emotions. Those being: “I’m pissed and everything’s great” and “I’m pissed and everything is shit”. Most of the anger is directed squarely at mainstream consumer culture and the album is peppered with vile late ‘90s consumerist buzz words: “Is it Isotonic? Is it reversible? Is it a jacket? Back to your Barrett houses! Lonely in the Harvester, I’m new!, on a jetski…” etc. The overall effect is kind of like when you get the last train home pissed and end up looking around you thinking, “Is everyone in this country a complete fucking wanker?” But there’s enough humour, mischief and bile in there to keep the lyric sheet out of tramp at a bus stop territory.
So why is this a great lost album? Most bands don’t care if you want to hate them, they just want someone to like them. Earl Brutus didn’t seem to care whether anyone hated them or indeed liked them. Only a band with such antipathy towards the general public would happily play the Friday 11:30AM ‘Hangover Slot’ in the tent at Reading TWO years in a row. Only a band so nonplussed by credibility and recognition would, in the space where most bands cram their debuts with thank you credits for everyone from the vending machine man at the label to their pre-school maths teacher, Earl Brutus simply left, “Thanks not applicable”. The last time I saw Earl Brutus they weren’t even performing live. They just sat around a table getting stuck into two slabs of Skol shouting at their DJ – “next fucking record” – and generally ranting in between songs. It seemed like a fitting swansong.
Whilst ‘Your Majesty, We are here’ is no great leap forwards musically, it rules because of what it represents. A big fuck you to sobriety, normality and all that is crap and average. Gentlemen, step this way for those OBEs.
Hi. I wished to drop you a quick notice to specific my thanks. I have been following your weblog for a month or so and have picked up some good info in addition to enjoyed the best way you have structured your site. I am attempting to run my very own weblog but I feel its too general and I wish to focus more on smaller topics. Being all issues to all people is just not all that its cracked as much as be.