I seem to recall that 90s T-shirt makers Ned’s Atomic Dustbin made the occasional foray into music and enjoyed some success in the indie harts with ‘Kill Your Television’. Mostly, the name is synonymous with German army jackets, dreadlocks, DMs and alt-trendy weekend vegetarians who bought Body Shop soap.
Re-emerging in an acoustic guise with a bit of prodding from Miles Hunt, who produced this album and on whose label this album appears, they reflect on their career with each of their three albums being more or less equally represented.
‘Cut Up’, ‘Gey Cell Green’, ‘Capital Letters’ and ‘Happy’ are lifted from the monster debut, ‘God Fodder’, and it’s perhaps worthy of a nod of respect that they’ve not gone the ‘greatest hits acoustic’ route.
So, that means not only no ‘Kill Your Television’, but also no ‘Not Sleeping Around’ (was that a hit single or just a hit T-Shirt?), and no ‘Until You Find Out’, but ‘Trust’, ‘Intact’, and ‘All I Ask of Myself is that I Hold Myself Together’ do make it.
|
Stripped back to acoustic guitar and singing, the basic structures, and the emotional qualities of the lyrics are placed to the fore. This does also mean that the songs being mostly in the same key and similar tempo is quite apparent. It also means that the band’s defining feature, the twin-bass thump is entirely absent, as is the bright, toppy guitar squall. But this collection does highlight the fact that their career was also defined by a knack for hooks and melodies, and those are things that stand up in any format.
|
