SIX OF THE BEST SONGS FROM BRIGHTONMUSIC FROM BRIGHTON
While we’re busy putting a reassuring arm around your trembling shoulder, telling you everything’s tickety boo in Brighton, here’s half a dozen reasons why our streets are paved with musical gold.
THE PIRAHNAS ‘TOM HARK’ (1980)
‘Boring’ Bob Grover’s sermon from 1980 kind of sums up our feelings of helplessness over Brighton’s current situation – “you have to laugh or else you cry”. Possibly the most widely known song ever to come out of the city, its continued use on the terraces nationwide is testament to its jaunty longevity; indeed a cover version with the bracketed suffix (We Want Falmer) by Seagulls Ska entered the charts in 2005 as part of the bid to secure the stadium site for the Albion. Why hasn’t Boring Bob Grover got his own bus front? (NC)
PRIMAL SCREAM ‘COME TOGETHER’ (1991)
Primal Scream aren’t a Brighton band, we hear you shout, but for a while they were. And it was their time hitting our town’s acid house parties that led to the genius indie dance hybrid of ‘Screamadelica’. So well does that album mesh that it’s hard to single out a track, but ‘Come Together’ is pretty special. It helps that both versions are brilliant; Terry Farley’s baggy-esque pop single take – all Moseley Sholes horns and riffy guitars – and Andy Weatherall’s dubbed out protest-rave album version. (JK)
BONOBO ‘SLEEPY SEVEN’ (2000)
A decade ago chillout wasn’t a dirty word – it was simply emotional downtempo music. A million compilations changed that (by which time Bonobo had proved his music had much more depth), but no one had more feeling in their beats than Simon Green. ‘Animal Magic’, his debut, was the charity shop crate-digging look inside himself and ‘Sleepy Seven’ was its gem. A narcoleptic grasp of dreamy vocals, it was the soundtrack to years of back-to-ours sessions. (JK)
THE GO! TEAM ‘BOTTLE ROCKET’ (2005)
So you want to make a record that sounds like Sesame Street, with some Double-Dutch skipping rhymes, Sonic Youth guitars and Charlie Brown cartoon piano. Riiiiight… But you know what? It worked. The Go! Team’s debut album from whence this came was a glorious, really-shouldn’t-work mix of pop naïvete and DIY 21st Century punk exuberance. Critics agreed – it was nominated for the Mercury in 2005, only to be pipped to the post by Stephen-Fry-in-a-frightwig, Antony Hegarty & his Johnsons. (NC)
FUJIYA & MIYAGI ‘ANKLE INJURIES’ (2006)Despite their nomenclature suggesting an eastern origin, F&M are Brighton through and through, with reassuringly homegrown real names like Steve and David. This song is something of a calling card for the band; certainly in the definitive realisation of their krautrock, electronica and French pop influences but also in the vocal refrain consisting of a repeated mantra of the band’s name. ‘Collarbone’ is the tune the ad agencies clamour for, but its trademark Neu! bass and drums pattern make this the best example of Brighton via Berlin we’ve heard. (NC)
THE MACCABEES ‘NO KIND WORDS’ (2009)
No one saw this coming. Their debut album ‘Colour It In’ was full of lovelorn ditties about the local lido and illicit teen snogs, but when Arcade Fire helmsman Marcus Dravs came on board, our speakers fairly tore themselves a new tweeter. Equal parts a dark lament for a dear friend lost to himself, and a searing rebuke to the unkind words levelled against him, all housed in a tempo-shifting, neo-gloom indie pop guitar joint that the Psychedelic Furs wished they had the emotional intelligence to write. (MB)
More Six Of The Best: Click Here6best
WORDS BY MATT BARKER, NICK COQUET, JAMES KENDALL
