Weekly > Reviews
The Courteeners - St. Jude
Manchester has over the years produced some brilliant bands, as much as it pains me to say it being on this side of the Pennines they have a deep musical heritage that they can quite rightly be proud of. Be it the musical poetry of Morrissey and Marr in The Smiths, the intense brilliance of Ian Curtis in Joy Division or the whole Madchester scene and all it encompessed and yes I know they were producing great artists well before those periods of well.
It has though over the years also been a huge weight around bands necks, bands that had talent but immediately had to suffer comparisons, Oasis got away with it by nicking more from Liverpool than Manchester, but others like Puressence have had to stick around based on their sales in far flung lands rather than the domestic market, some were even less fortunate and fell by the way side.
So it was refreshing when I interviewed The Courteeners recently that frontman Liam Fray wasn’t playing down the influence of the city, in fact it was the opposite, feeling it should be embraced and something to be proud of and inspired by, not scared of.
Which is probably why St Jude works so well, particularly after a couple of listens. It does have very definite Manchester influences throughout it, Oasis are in there, but luckily they plucked from the right Oasis period when they were in their prime, cocky, confident and good. It also though has the confidence to go outside of the city and develop it’s own sound and this ability to shift between the two could well be what will be the making of the band in the long run.
Every year we need a new ‘lads’ band and this year is no different, The Twang can step down from the podium now while they work on a follow up because The Courteeners have enough about them to suggest that nobody is going to sneak out of the woodwork and surpass them easily.
The main thing that stands out for me is the intros to each of the songs, there is a real immediate quality that draws you in in the same way that Supersonic and Live Forever did all those years ago. Aftershave has a real shimmering opening, Bide Your Time twinkles and then on the other side of it, you get Kings Of The New Road that has a real crunchy-blues feel to the track.
- The Courteeners
- St. Jude (2008)
- Category: Album
- Label: Polydor Records
- Reviewed by: Kev
- Published on: 07 Apr 2008
- Comments: 0
- Beat Surrender Rating:
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Add to favouritesLyrically the songs are all subjects that the common lad (and lass for that matter) can associate with, relationships of course feature, but it’s the tales of excess and the victims of excess that realy stand out, such as Cavorting that opens with “Your club is full of over rated dehydrated goggle eyed girls and they’re trying to stare at me but their eyes are rattling and they’re struggling to see”.
It’s this lyrical bond with the youngish bloke on the street that ties them to all those other Manchester bands, not a sound or even the shared cockiness, it’s the fact that Northern towns and Manchester inparticular seem to produce groups that can translate everyday living, loving and losing it better than most.
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