'97. 1997. Nineteen-ninety-seven. What a year THAT was gonna be. New albums by Blur, Radiohead, Pulp, Spiritualized (Minus the EM this time around), Supergrass, Elastica, Oasis, The Verve, Primal Scream, Prodigy, and extremely promising new bands in the shape of Embrace, Travis and Stereophonics... So why wasn't it as good as it should have been. Or was it?...
Well with all the new elpees from some of the biggest and most loved forces in music today, some of them were bound to dissapoint. So lets talk through them. Well Blur and Radiohead's album in fact turned out to be better than expected. Both had the same effect as classic albums: on first listening, you think it's not a patch on some previous works (In Blur's case "Modern Life..." and in Radiohead's case "The Bends"), but they grow on you like a fungus if you haven't washed for 50 years and you've been nailed to a damp tree all that time. They were great. "OK Computer" got voted the best album of all time in Q and the 6th best on a channel 4 poll (The Bends cropped up fourth). So these bands have nicely secured themselves with a safe knowledge that they have definately done something right. The question is, how the hell do you follow up two of the most phenominal albums ever made? We'll see... Anyway, onwards and err downwards really. Pulp's new album didn't even surface last year. All we got was 'Help the Aged', catchy as a pulp song is, slow, and not a patch on days of old where 'Sorted...' kicked up a real stink and 'Common People' was THE anthem of the year. I'm sorry Pulp fans but I can't help thinking they let us down. It wasn't a bad song by any means, but it wasn't as great as we'd all hoped. But how DO you follow up songs like Pulp's singles of 1995 anyway?
Spiritualized's album seemed to sink without a trace, until Christmas. All of a sudden 'Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space' became album of the year, or second best, in almost every magazine. It was meant to be stunning, and although I haven't heard it, Come Together and Electricity demanded attention, and it's verging on criminal the way they barely charted. 'In it for the Money' was full of much the same stuff as 'old' supergrass, although some songs were a tad more experimental, and seemed slower and heavier as opposed to poppy songs like Alright. If they now put album's souns together they will have the right balance between their heavier sounds (Richard III, Cheapskate) and their more pop-py anthems (Alright). Elastica couldn't be arsed, or have actually split up, and let's face it, God only knows with Elastica. It could be 50 years until we hear from them again. Oasis' new album I didn't hear and didn't want to, cos they're 2-bit 2 dimensional crap and Noel just re-wrote his 2nd album according to the singles, and everyone i know with the album (For the record, these people hadn't bought the album, but had taped it, because they saw no point in shelling out the best part of £15 for an album they already owned twice already). 'Urban Hymns' was obviously gonna be a let down. And it was. There was no way they could live up to the hype that they'd generated after Bittersweet Symphony and The Drugs Don't Work. And although Bittersweet, Rolling People, Drugs Don't Work, Weeping Willow, Lucky Man and Come On were quite spectacular, the rest were just fillers (And that includes Sonnet, which is just utter crap).
Primal Scream's offering, 'Vanishing Point', I didn't hear, but I don't think there's a single person who'se head wasn't turned even a bit by 'Kowalski'. It was amazing. But the other singles fell short of it, unsurprisingly. The Chemical Brother's remix of 'Burning Wheel was good, but not good enough. And the Prodigy. Their 'Fat of the Land' worked surprisingly well. Funky Shit even made it on to Event Horizon. It was the best Dance record in ages, but it wasn't the best album of the year, not by a long shot. Because last year's real jems, bar Blur and Radiohead, came from bands that you wouldn't expect to bring out great albums, up there with the likes of the Verve et al.
Pavement's 'Brighten the Corners' was good at first, until track 5 where it just collapsed under back into lo-fi mode, which isn't bad, but it just didn't really spark anything off with me. Portishead's sudden comeback was good, but their album just turned really sour (No sad pun intended) after 'Mourning Air'. And, most astonishingly of all, the Super Furry Animals made another album. Just over a year since 'Fuzzy Logic', the amazing 'Radiator' came out and it was so fantastic you wouldn't believe. It was, like Spiritualized's, loved by the music press (NME especially, and us), but didn't do much in album charts. Mansun's 'Attack Of The Grey Lantern' looked like a sure fire contender for album of the year but by the time Blur, Radiohead and SFA had got into gear they didn't have a chance. But 'Attack...' was pretty mind -blowing non the less, and very sinister. There were a fair share of new bands, too. Travis were great. Happy was fantastic, Tied to the 90's was superb, as was U16 Girls, with their singalong choruses and all that. A bit of light in a very dark year, musically. Another band flying the torch against 'miserablism' were Wales' newest exports the Stereophonics, who's catchy guitar driven songs were great, some mellow, some upbeat, but still they got messages across. Well, some of them. And Embrace, well they were just the best new band. Any band with a song as brilliant as 'One Big Family' deserves the title of best newcomers. And Last Gas was super too. 'All You Good Good People' wasn't quite the rock behemoth that NME and Danny made it out to be, but 'One Big Family' was instead. And so was Fireworks. And with their album 'The Good Will Out' just around the corner, the future is looking extremely bright for this band.
So 1997 wasn't all that bad, but what about this year. Well, if Mark and Lard (Gods of radio for now and ever - Still) asked us, we'd only have one thing to say. It's alright. Err, honest.