There was a time in the early 90s where chants of ‘Utah Saints! U-U-U-Utah Saints!’ were ubiquitous. Exploding into the charts with their debut single, the sample-heavy ‘What Can You Do For Me,’ they went massive in an instant. The follow-up, ‘Something Good,’ famously sampled Kate Bush’s ‘Cloudbusting’, and, remarkably, remains to this day the only sample usage Kate Bush has ever granted. They were the dance band it was ok for indie kids to like, possibly because of the irreverent use of sampling and loops, or, equally as likely, because they had songs that were simply as catchy as hell.
As a Leeds-based act, they even appeared at the Town And Country (now a crappy O2) with none other than Andrew Eldritch of The Sisters of Mercy providing vocals on a couple of songs at the Off The Streets homeless benefit gig in August 1993, on the same bill as The Mission, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, and Cud.
Their eponymous debut was released in May 1993: and now, 31 years on, to mark National Album Day – which I’ll admit I didn’t even know was a thing – it’s being reissued, in remastered form, with a second disc of mixes and the usual gubbins.
Nostalgia inevitably plays a part in my enjoyment in revisiting this, and hearing the superimposed crowd noise on a number of the tracks is amusing, reminding me as it does of The KLF and their ‘stadium house trilogy’. The acts were essentially contemporaries, and I note that Bill Drummond described them as “the first true stadium house band”. High praise indeed.
There’s no question that Utah Saints broke new ground, and it’s not an opinion but a fact that ‘Utah Saints’ is packed with hyperactive groove-laden bangers. It takes some audacity to open with a cover, but their pulsating take on Simple Minds’ ‘New Gold Dream 81-82-83-84’ is inspired and an instant grab ahead of ‘What Can You Do For Me,’ and what really leaps out is the amount of work which evidently went into putting all of the component parts together. It shares more commonality with The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu’s sample riots than what Drummond and Cauty would go on to do as The KLF, but Utah Saints refined the process and rendered it cohesive and beat-driven.
There’s no denying that they don’t make records like this anymore, but then again, even during that spell at the tail-end of 80s and through early 90s, no-one else made an album quite like this one.
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‘Soulution’ veers towards enigma music with its spaced-out groove, while managing to avoid going full panpipe new age wankery; and then ‘Believe in Me’ lands and damn! Of course, part of the reason these songs were instant earworms is because the samples were so savvy, it was like you knew the song before you’d even heard it, the hooks being lifted meant they were earworms of earworms. Lifting a Human League chorus was genius, tapping into the eighties nostalgia which was already emerging at the time. But it’s still all in the execution.
‘Something Good’ still sounds ace, and while ‘Stranger Things’ drove an immense Kate Bush revival, Utah Saints were here fully three decades ago. The housey-house piano does sound very much of its time, as is true of the scratching and wibbling on ‘I Want You’, but the overall experience of listening to this is a jolting reminder of just how much innovation was happening around this time.
Surveying the scene in 2024, the charts and the mainstream are limp, lame, and samey, and while there is outstanding new music released every single week, there’s not much coming through that makes you really sit up and say ‘wow, this is new!’ Surely we haven’t reached the end of the line, but I suppose it remains to be seen. And if this is only a station or two from that point, well, it’s a high water mark.
The second CD is worth it for ‘Utah Saints Take on The Theme From Mortal Kombat’ alone, but some of the mixes are decent, too.
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