Let's talk about the new Streets album A GRAND DON'T COME FOR FREE.

Still a classic in my eyes, though.

A "Fit But You Know It" B-Side. Mike steals 3 euros-worth of ice cream, and that's apparently why he's so angry with himself in "Such a Twat" ("Why'd I have to go and do a stupid thing like that?"). It should've been on the album!

it's been 2 years in a row already with Original Pirate Material and then Boy In Da Corner.

PLEASE, PLEASE, I'm actually begging.

DOWNLOAD THESE “Blinded by the Light,” “Fit but You Know It,” “Dry Your Eyes”

I mean, this nearly made me fall off my chair?! wtf

Ronan, if it continues to disturb me after all this time i will mention it.

Is it the influence of British pop crit, or is it the influence of dance critics jumping on board a "hip-hop" release? Who cares. All I know is its an album I like a lot that I want to hate because it gets all this acclaim over albums I feel are much much more deserving.

Jesus Christ it IS going to start all over again. Why does this happen with UK garage crossover?????

Surely sitting together as a piece is the central premise of dance music!

Mind you there's alot of clever production, Blinded By The Lights is ace. I think there are definitely 3-4 tracks which are plot device type tracks, and they are the more angry or brash ones, and then 3-4 emotional ones which are the big hitters in a way.

I mean I've not seen other critical darlings get constantly dubbed "emperors new clohtes" etc, is it because the praise for the UK garage crossover artists is really detailed or strong? Or do people just hate British accents! Or is it just that it's like a ghettoised scene hitting peoples promo piles or radars.

1. The British music press is really influential, so I think some people can't help but feel like a British artist is going to have an unfair advantage.

2. Some may feel that people in the press who champion the Streets didn't give the same daps to the people who influenced the Streets.

See, this is what I don't get most. The critical acclaim is easier to understand, but nothing on AGDCFF moves me in the way that most of OPM did. I really find a lot of it overly sentimental actually, really trite and heavy-handed, and the use of vernacular doesn't help. Probably the opposite actually.

I thought this would grow on me loads by now, but it's growing off me, partly because there's no novelty with the story any more.

Very good, but I didn't get that same feeling of "this is a classic" that I did with first play of OPM ... until the last two songs of course, which are utter brilliance.

Big question for me tho' is: will this stand up to repeated plays? (if that matters - I rarely cane any LP to death anyway, and especially not ones I rate very highly fo fear of getting bored with them). But relevant herew, because of the linking story. Yeah, I had a lump in my throat during "Dry Your Eyes" and at the end of "Empty Cans", but can't see that happening once familiarity sets in.

Oh I don't think it's cynical as such... it's just uncomfortably close to that hand-wringing drippiness of Coldplay (see: "Dry Your Eyes"). Very "look at ME!!! I am SENSITIVE!!!"

I think Diamanda Galás once said of a Trembling Blue Stars song "I just don't care about sensitive straight boys and their problems; just put a tampon on it." That's sort of what I feel here. It really distresses me that the same man who made OPM has now made something I can compare to Coldplay.

No one is making music like this.

Malcolm Gladwell, author, Blink:
"2005 was the year I discovered the Streets. Oh my. For the second time in 30 years, the British take an African-American musical form and wonderfully reinvent it."

http://www.slate.com/id/2133842/?nav=tap3

What was the first time? Credit to the Nation? A Guy Called Gerald? FLEETWOOD MAC?

I MUST KNOW

"With each new season, the pre-adolescent characters in South Park, Col., enact more daring, unruly versions of reality. Those foul-mouthed yet innocent falsetto voices demolish cant from the left and the right. Mealy-mouthed moderation and evangelism, sanctimony secular as well as religious, get what they deserve, and the setting is a Western town a half-hour from Denver, a place where shopping mall culture and Main Street (site of "Tom's Rhinoplasty") thrive in co-existence. Even Hell and Heaven become part of the system with South Park Elementary School at the hub."

-- NoTimeBeforeTime (mbvarkestra197...), January 6th, 2006. (later)

seriously... what is he talking about?

It concerns Skinner's attempts to pull a famous women (*COUGH* Rach31 St3vens!) is just as hard as pulling normal birds was pre-fame.

It sounds like a lead off single, quick , catchy (not as catchy as FBYKI though.)

GAAAAAAARBAGE ! Holy shit, those of you who thought the new Flaming Lips single was bad (I love it, personally) wait'll you hear this shit.

Must be heard to be believed.

The new album by The Streets album is called 'The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living' and is out on April 11th

i hadn't listened to it in forever, but i still love "empty cans." it warms my cold heart tbh.

"No one's really there fighting for you in the last garrison. No one except yourself that is; no one except you. You are the one who's got your back til the last deed's done." It's really awesome that he manages to make this sound sweet and hopeful rather than embittered and fucktheworld, imo

Mike Skinner OTM.

Oh god is this really nearly 10 years old??!

I have a distinct memory of going out to one of the best free parties on a Saturday night and picking this up from the record shop on my way home the next morning. It was a very good comedown album for that time - 'Blinded By The Lights' especially.

nooooooooooooo i refuse to believe it is 10 years old

the time that it came out was a fun and great time in my life

i do remember sitting at my computer crying tears of relief at "empty cans" tho lol

Yeah me too Rox, 2004 was a good year. Ah the olden days...

I don't think I've heard this since it came out, but I think I can be confident in saying that he never bettered it.

The delivery on this bit is the LOLziest...

You don't care about my broken TV
I sit on my sofa all day smoking weed
I never phoned that bloke from the TV company
So please don't be like this, please, please, please