There are few bands as deeply woven into Joyzine as Art Brut. Our paths first crossed in the earliest days of the band’s and this site’s existence at a South London Music Tourist Board event hosted at the Paradise Bar (RIP) in New Cross by the wonderful Caffy St Luce (who remains our musical fairy godmother to this day) and attended by many bands that would feature regularly in these pages in the months and years to come. It was essentially the night that the ‘New Cross Scene’ was born, which had a brief but brilliant moment in the national media spotlight.
That evening, Art Brut guitarist Chris Chinchilla handed me a CD with the word “Brutlegs” scrawled in felt-tip pen, housed in a clear plastic sleeve, and a label that looked like it had been printed on his home computer, listing the titles of the three tracks included. Just over 20 years later, the postman rings my doorbell and hands me a far more luxurious package—an elegant three-color folding cardboard construction concealing five CDs of recordings from the first half of the band’s decade, along with photos from the period, liner notes by frontman Eddie Argos, and a signed art print.
Back then, Argos’ half-spoken vocals (to which the title of this box set and the lyrics of “Formed a Band” refer) seemed an anomaly in a sea of Libertines-inspired urchin-rock douchebags, and the early shows I attended in pubs and tiny basement venues were met with many frowns and comments of “I don’t get it.” The thought that they would not only still be around two decades later, but also play much bigger venues and release a two-part retrospective of their career seemed highly unlikely. Despite this (or perhaps because of this), I loved them from the moment I flipped through the CD-ROM, and fell head over heels in love when I saw them live, telling anecdotes between songs or depicting artistic movements through sound and filling the Buffalo Bar with soap bubbles from a toy gun – it was theater and comedy and poetry and punk rock and pop music with a capital P all at once, and it sounded unlike anything else around at the time. Over time, more and more people understood it and a cult formed around the band.
What perhaps resonated most was the love of making and listening to music that was at the heart of their live shows. ‘Formed a Band’, their breakthrough song, got to the heart of why so many millions of people around the world make the foolhardy decision to pick up an instrument or a microphone, walk on stage in front of a room full of strangers and pour out their heart and soul for 30 minutes in exchange for £50 and a couple of pints of the venue’s cheapest lager (if they’re lucky). At their live shows, this was accompanied by Argos’ eager pleas for every member of the audience to go off and form their own band – they even started a franchise system with more than 100 AB bands worldwide playing Art Brut covers and songs inspired by the band – there was even an Art Brut franchise Battle of the Bands at The Luminaire in Kilburn.
Her debut album Bang Bag Rock and Roll The album followed in 2005, released by the experienced indie label Fierce Panda, making them accessible to an ever-larger audience. The single “Emily Kane” failed to achieve Argos’ dream of being on Top of the PopsThis success led to a contract with Mute Records (part of industry giant EMI) for the successor It’s a bit complicatedreleased in 2007. It was originally recorded with Pulp’s Russell Senior at the helm, but was re-recorded with Dan Swift after the label rejected Senior’s version. This box set covers the period of these first two LPS, with a second collection due out sometime in the future, presumably continuing with the 2009 version. Art Brut Vs Satan.
So what’s in the box? You get both albums along with a comprehensive selection of B-sides, rarities and live recordings from ULU in London (with horn section!) and Paris, plus an integrated booklet with Eddie Argos’ memories of the time and a selection of photos: posed, live and behind the scenes and a fine art print signed by Eddie Argos.
Bang Bang Rock and Roll is on CD1 and for my money the three tracks that open the album, ‘Formed A Band’, ‘My Little Brother’ and ‘Emily Kane’ are still some of the most wonderfully pop-spectacular openings to a record I’ve covered in my 20-odd years as a Joyzine fan. Bubbly, colourful, bouncing on the bed and screaming the words at the top of your lungs, they’re all bangers. Add to that the WOO!-filled chorus of ‘Modern Art’ and the skint-rock classic ‘Bad Weekend’ with its instantly quotable refrain “Popular culture no longer applies to me” and it’s easy to see why the band were still able to pack out venues for the album’s reissue tour a few years ago.
CD2 takes us to It’s a bit complicatedan album that took the band’s penchant for pop culture references to the extreme, naming tracks ‘I Will Survive’, ‘Jealous Guy’ and ‘Nag Nag Nag Nag’, and elsewhere quoting ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ and ‘What Becomes of The Broken Hearted’. With a cleaner sound and higher production values, it loses a little of the DIY charm of its predecessor, but makes up for it with Argos’ confessional (and often amusing) lyrics and encompasses a wider range of the guitar pop spectrum. We get cheeky odes to music fanatics ‘Pump Up The Volume’ and ‘Sound of Summer’, the crunchy guitars of ‘Post Soothing Out’, the indie dancefloor filler ‘Direct Hit’ and the charmingly laid-back ‘People In Love’, all of which retain the spirit that made us fall in love with the first record, while venturing ever so slightly into new territory.
The third CD contains B-sides, rarities and a handful of live recordings from the Bang Bang Rock and Roll era. As is usual, these will be of interest to die-hard fans and completists, but there is plenty of gold to be mined for casual fans or newcomers as well. “These Animal Menswe@r” could have (and perhaps should have) been a standalone A-side, the staccato Spanish guitar-influenced opening of “Really Bad Weekend” is an unexpected treat, and “Enrique Gatti (Subliminal Desire for Adventure)” shows a different side of the band with a rare foray into instrumentalism. I have a nostalgic fondness for the Brood legs Versions of “Formed a Band”, “Modern Art” and “Moving to LA” and the punky hit “Top Of The Pops!”, recorded for an Angular Records compilation and featuring a list of half the bands Joyzine covered at the time, is an important document of a scene that, although small, was a big part of the lives of everyone involved in it, whether musician or fan. The disc is rounded off by an entertaining live set, recorded at ULU and featuring a three-piece horn section.
We’re then treated to a similar collection from the second album era. The B-sides are all impressive, with the bright guitars of ‘I Found This Song In The Road’ and the off-key hand-clap-filled ‘I Want to be Double A-Sided’ being particularly pleasing. The real intrigue here, however, comes from the three tracks from the discarded Russell Senior sessions – a strangely jaunty version of ‘Blame It On The Trains’ and a weaker version of ‘Post Soothing Out’ suggest the label bigwigs may have made the right decision, but a smoother, punkier version of ‘St Pauli’, which puts their dirty bassline to the fore and adds some rare Argos screams, is far more appealing. This side is again rounded off with live recordings, this time from the 2006 Eurockenennes Festival (note the tongue-in-cheek musical introduction to ‘Formed a Band’).
Rounding out the box set is a complete 15-song live set recorded in Paris in 2006 (and featuring another cheeky “Formed a Band” intro). Art Brut’s musicianship is often underrated, but this set perfectly demonstrates the incompatibility between the band’s cohesiveness and Argos’ tendency to (often hilariously) go off script and improvise his lyrics, challenging them to keep the song on track.
Those two albums were the soundtrack to an important time in my life and listening to this collection brought back the memories. But, importantly, the music stands the test of time – I wouldn’t expect newbies to splurge on a box set, but thankfully there is an accompanying “best of” album, A record collection reduced to a mixtapewas also released. It spans the band’s entire existence and provides a perfect entry point for those who are new to the band. Given the number of spoken word indie punk bands that have made waves in recent years, Art Brut is definitely worth reviving.
Listening to these tracks in such a compressed chunk also gave me a chance to reflect on why Art Brut, perhaps more than any other band from our early years, has remained important both to Joyzine and to me personally. I think it might be because, although I gave the site the name JOYzine, most of the music I loved back then (and still love) tended to fall into the categories of “miserable” or “angry” (that wasn’t such a good title). Art Brut stood out from the brooding crowd with their optimism, their love of pop music and just because they were damn good fun, and they still make me smile nearly 21 years later.
Review and photography by Paul Maps
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And yes, that is my singing voice! is out now on Alcopop! Records and Demon Music Group – get your copy here
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