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

I know plenty of people for whom this lifestyle is pretty alien.

If anything it's saying that you are on your own, it's Skinner realising that you have your friends and that's fine but ultimately you must look after yourself, and you don't deserve attention or more shoulders to cry on than anyone else, because everybody else has to look after themselves too.

And at the same time there's a beauty to that because it's our diversity and the sense that we're all unique which prevents us from getting along, from true unity. Loneliness is also independence, difference, invention. Problems need solutions.

We actually got to talking about "Empty Cans" after a discussion of the Mayday protests, and I said I thought it was kind of tragic but almost beautiful hearing these spokespersons terrified to nail their colours to the mast, politically, because there was no real political thread uniting the protestors, just a general sense that "something is wrong", and in a way there's all these people on the streets who are unhappy but aren't actually united at all.

If anything to me that's an illustration of the problems in the world, that for them to go away or dissipate and for us to exist together peacefully we must cease to be individuals, or in a perfect world what would the point of there being a "you" or a "me" be.

I think Empty Cans really goes to the core of so many human issues. It's a massive song.

x-post, oops there should be a "know" there somewhere N, "everyone I know".

Skinner intends to up the political (small p) content of his next records, apparently. We could all be Streets-hatas in 12 months time.

Nick otherwise OTM on this thread.

This is my point! OPM flits between stuff which isn't believable or real and stuff which is, and so the stuff which IS real is magnified and - because it happens so unconsciously - is more affecting.

Whereas AGDCFF aims to be about life as much as about himself, but... it's too contrived, and N is right, that's not life for a lot of people.

(xposts)

Also - in OPM he's not trying to convey a sense of lifestyle so much, just details about life.

Yeah, I figured that. I was just saying that there are plenty of indiekids and regular straights who have no experience of the lifestyle Skinner depicts. I'm surprised you don't know any. It would be interesting to know if any of them would enjoy the Streets.

Skinner's lifestyle is alien to many people (me included) but it's the same emotions in different situations (at least partly). Plus many of his songs are funny - I don't think ppl would need to identify with them to enjoy them on this level. (although obv they'd "get" smth different from it)

(many xposts)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/regulars/ontherecord/story/0,12255,1210210,00.html

thanks to martian's page http://www.djmartian.blogspot.com not sure if it's come up yet but worthy of some debate on the new thread nontheless.

This needs to be released on DVD, with a video for every song.

A comfy house, ha ha. He had too many throw cushions to be genuinely working class.

She seems somewhat confused about the class issues she does or does not have problems with. Mike Skinner despite his slightly less than humble upbringings is no 'middle-class guiltnik'. So she assesses his honesty? Well isn't that the point of and why we love the record? Its masterfully delivered narrative? We can easily dispense with the amount of fabrication in the record because it is story, urban opera, spoken word or whatever. But something grounded in urban reality.

How many authors throughout history have represented a class from which they do not belong? This album transcends class in many ways. If there is a mass consensus about its relative greatness in the media then that stems from its universal themes and just how genuinely affecting it is for many people. Oxbridge educated or not. I think Caroline is foolish to completely disregard the album context and seems to have more disregard for the streets than The Streets.

I don't know that I'd call it "every man for himself" paranoia, though. If the final song represents two endings, I still consider the first to represent the kick in the head that he needed the entire album to realize what a fuck up he's been, both to his girlfriend (see track 5 for the explanation of their typical, comfortable and boring relationship) and to his friends re the money.
Considering everything that happens through the course of the album, it strikes me as more someone who knows they should have just buckled down and looked for the money, instead of immediately barking at their friends to figure out who is at fault. And I'm not sure that it's all every man for himself, cause the point with Scott and Dan is that Scott is just in the middle, and why should he sacrifice his friendship with Dan for Mike's sake. But the Mike in the album is a dick to everyone, not thinking about their motives, just feeling loads of self pity.
I'd say the second ending to Empty Cans is when he appears less paranoid, with a better perspective on the way things played out, and realizing he could have handled things far better than he did.

Having said all of this, I absolutely LOVE the album and the story.

I do think it's great / exceptional / marvellous etcetera in it's own right though.

I think the beat and the two different piano tracks make "Empty Cans" for me, and stop me having the same reservations about it as N does; the first part being foreboding and unavoidability, the second being a slowly unfurling sense of hope.

I think that maybe three or four tracks are, out of the context of the storyline, poor, or even very poor - "It Was Supposed To Be So Easy", "What Is He Thinking", "Such A Twat".

I think there are potentially quite a few singles though - "Not Addicted", "Dry Your Eyes", "Could Well Be In", "Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way". I think "Blinded By The Lights" is amazing, but not a single, likewise "Empty Cans".

I think his lyrics are good in the way that Mike Leigh scripts are good, which is a very different kind of good to the lyrics on OPM - fwiw I think i prefer the OPM take all in all, but there are certain bits of AGDCFF that are just astounding.

I think the more stripped production works very well in the context of what the album is, but I'm gutted that there's nothing really lush or banging or full. I listened to "Fit..." back to back with "Don't Mug Yourself" and "Fit..." sounded really weedy by comparison, likewise "Blinded By The Lights" and "Weak Become Heroes".

I hope this isn't the start of a narrative-album bandwagon.

I really want to hear what he's going to do next, and am slightly pissed that it's probably going to be two years until I do; the novelty of this almost makes it seem like a side-project. I hope he turns his gaze outwards slightly next, and also hits the dancefloor again.

I was waiting for someone (Caroline Sullivan is a perfect culprit) to decry Skinner for either being a class-tourist or else a misogynist. (I also think she's wrong re; it being the sound of vinyl spun backwards in "Empty Cans"; it sounds like a reel-to-reel tape to me, and the assertion that it must be vinyl posits it as a very masculine sound, all the connotations of audiophilia, collectorism, that anal 'record collector boy'/'comic store man' impotent, emotionally immature masculinity being a very cynical stick to shake at him - "silly little boys prefer records to women" etcetera etcetera).

I'm not sure it'll be a shoe-in for the Mercury - they can't have three ostensibly garage acts winning in a row, surely? Maybe Ivor Novello, given the narrative arc!

I don't live the lifestyle Skinner portrays at all, but there have been times when I almost have, and I've known plenty of other people who do.

haha *cough*.

ok, it's not strictly true that I have 'no experience of the lifestyle Skinner depicts', I suppose.