album of the day

Elastica by Elastica.

A lot of things are great at the time, but a bit shit and/or embarrassing when viewed with the benefit of sober hindsight. Various clothing and hairstyle choices, eating caviar off that male prostitute's scrotum, that sort of thing. Britpop is a bit like that - when you look back now a lot of it has deservedly been consigned to the dustbin of history - Shed Seven, anyone? No? Even hugely popular stuff like Oasis's (What's The Story) Morning Glory? and Blur's The Great Escape turn out to be a bit suspect in hindsight.

This, by contrast, is a punky little gem. Only four of the fifteen songs exceed three minutes, and four of them are less then two minutes. There's no extraneous cor anglais solos, either, just some guitars and Annie Holland's trebly Stranglers-esque bass. The Stranglers comparison is apposite in other ways, as there was a bit of furore over some, hem hem, "borrowings", specifically The Stranglers' No More Heroes in Waking Up and a couple of Wire songs in Line Up and Connection.

There's a Liz Phair-esque sexual up-frontness to the lyrics as well, from Car Song's fantasising about being bent over car bonnets to Stutter's ridiculing of a boyfriend with brewer's droop. Add to this that all the women in the group (i.e. everyone except the drummer, who was a bloke - the same sort of deal as the Corrs, in other words) were very attractive in a slightly grimy black jeans and Doc Marten's kind of way, and you've got something considerably more appealing than, say, Embrace. Not that that would be difficult.