Upon A Mouse #6: Shadows Fall As We Line Up In The Dark Of The Matinée

Rounding out this week's trio of posts is a trio of self-titled debut albums, courtesy of The Coral, Elastica and Franz Ferdinand.

If you've not yet seen the previous five posts in the Upon A Mouse series, then suffice to say that the starting point/inspiration is The 20 Greatest Eponymous Albums Of All Time series which ran throughout October over at No Badger Required.

In the NBR countdown, The Coral didn't make the Top 20; Elastica and Franz Ferdinand did, though lower than my submitted placings as a member of the NBR Musical Jury.

So, in reverse order, I present my picks at #15, #6 and #7.

I seem to start most of these posts with a confession that I was a belated fan / late adopter of said band, and so it is with The Coral. 

The Coral formed in 1996, released their debut in 2002, and enjoyed several Top 40 singles in the UK, but this had largely passed me by. Instead, it was constantly finding 4th album The Invisible Invasion in record shop bargain bins that finally persuaded me to dive in.

The Invisible Invasion is a great album, but as I later discovered, the  debut wasn’t exactly slim pickings either.  The ballsy opening salvo of Spanish Main and I Remember When prove early on that The Coral weren’t just the sum of their influences. 

A brace of singles follow, in Shadows Fall and Dreaming Of You, and I can understand the early comparisons with The Animals/Eric Burdon, and Ian Broudie's production (excuse the pun) echoes the likes of Echo & The Bunnymen and The Icicle Works. That said, The Coral established a singular identity from right from this album. 

Other personal favourites on the album include Simon Diamond and Waiting For The Heartaches and, whilst The Invisible Invasion pips it for me album-wise, The Coral's first album stands up, two decades on.

 

 

The guitar... the bassline... the sound of drummer Justin Welch retching… the intro to Line Up is worth the price of admission alone. 

Forget the accusations of plagiarism (well, unless you're legal representatives for The Stranglers and Wire), part of the appeal as a mid-20s fan was the familiarity of some of the riffs, as well as the interesting new musical shapes that Elastica made with them.

Justine Frischmann, Donna Matthews and Annie Holland were wonderfully moody, but listening to Elastica by Elastica again is a reminder of not just their effortless cool, but how tight the band were. 

The four singles - Stutter, Line Up, Connection and Waking Up, the latter three all making the UK Top 20 - are brilliant, though not the album's only high points. Fifteen songs, just one going over the four minute mark, makes for an album that delivers variety and brevity that other acts would have been wise to follow.

I was a bored by the BritPop wave and many of the bands dragged along by it’s wake. Not Elastica, though. This album still has the power to kiss your lips whilst kicking you in the crotch.

 

 

Franz Ferdinand may draw deep from the well of post-punk and new wave, in terms of music, fashion and attitude, but frankly I didn’t care, Alex Kapranos and the gang were just what I needed in 2004, nearly a decade on from Elastica's debut.

It’s not one that I immediately think of as a perfect album, but I struggle to find fault with it either. Eleven great songs, wonderfully  performed, recorded and sequenced, and all stand up to repeated listening. 

Five singles may seem excessive, though it's hard to take issue with any of them. Take Me Out is their signature song, yet The Dark Of The Matinée with it's reference to Terry Wogan holds a special place in my heart. 

Auf Achse and Michael are further standouts for me though there's not a single below par song on the entire album. I'd forgotten/didn't know that it won the Mercury Music Prize in 2004 and it's not a great surprise as Franz Ferdinand - the album and the band - still has the power to excite and delight in 2025.

 

 

Today's unexpected cover star is the late John Belushi in a scene from The Blues Brothers. 'Nuff said.

Decadance III: 1995

Side 2 of a time-travel mixtape, crashing in at 1995.

This series is whizzing by, more than half way through already and exactly 30 years ago. My brain cannot compute, so much of this music still feels 'recent' to me!

Very little evidence in this selection of Britpop, Trip Hop or Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop, although I think Scatman John was the sole proponent of the latter, anyway. 

However, in 1995 everything was big: the beats, the brass, the strings, the voices. And so were the hits: all but one of the songs in today's selection made the Top 30, four the Top 10, though the #1 position proved elusive for all.

Pulp nearly made it, with Common People getting all the way to #2, held off the top spot by effing Robson and effing Jerome, whose risible cover of Unchained Melody floated at the top like a turd in a toilet bowl for a mind-boggling seven weeks.

Several artists from Decade, my previous series of 80s mixtapes, make a welcome reappearance here: Marc Almond, Julian Cope and, perhaps the most surprising, Edwyn Collins. 

A Girl Like You was first released in December 1994 and didn't make much of a dent in the UK charts, but there was a groundswell of interest in Europe, leading to re-release here in June 1995. A month later and it was at #4. It also boosted the accompanying album Gorgeous George to #8 in July 1995, twelve months after it came out.

Leftfield had been tied up in contractual hell with their former label, which meant that they could little more than remix other artists for several years. Finally free to release their own material, their monumental debut album Leftism crashed in at #3 in February 1995. 

Leftism contained a version of Open Up, their 1993 comeback single with John Lydon, and collaborations with Djum Djum and Lemn Sissay. Leftfield's first single of 1995 was another collaboration, this time time with Toni Halliday of Curve on the sublime Original. Thirty years on, both it and the album sound as fresh and exciting as they did back then.

Another single by The Sabres Of Paradise for the MAW selection. Andrew Weatherall, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns had previously remixed Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons music as The Dust Brothers. When the original Dust Brothers required Tom and Ed to cease and desist nicking their name, The Chemical Brothers were born.  

 

The Sabres Of Paradise remixed their debut single Leave Home, itself a Top 20 hit in June 1995. The previous month, the favour was (p)repaid when The Chemical Brothers refashioned Tow Truck, one of several tracks from Haunted Dancehall reworked for the Versus EP. When I say 'refashioned', it's basically a Chemical Brothers track, but the original Sabres components shine through.

 

Describing Fluke's beats as big and bouncy sounds smuttier than it's supposed to, but that's what always springs to mind when I think of their music. Ironically, The Dust Brothers (the original, that is, not Tom & Ed's knock off) remixed today's featured single Bullet, though nothing tops Fluke's own versions. In a box somewhere in the loft, I have Fluke promo plastic bag, which itself ripped off the Tesco carriers of the time. Never used it.

 

Thirty years before he released possibly the best album of 2025 with Hifi Sean, David McAlmont launched another wildly creative and successful partnership, with Bernard Butler. Yes was the perfect introduction, all Wall-of-Sound meets Sylvester meets Suede and a deserved Top 10 smash. 

 

Bernard of course used to be in Suede with Brett Anderson, who co-founded the band with Justine Frischmann, who went on to form Elastica. You'd almost believe I wasn't winging it and had some kind of plan, wouldn't you? 

Elastica were brilliant, even if they did have a habit of getting old rockers riled up and litigious over their songs. Waking Up is a case in point: who cares if it's reminiscent of No More Heroes by The Stranglers? Well, The Stranglers did obviously.

 

The music press were already getting into a lather about Radiohead, though The Bends was the album that hooked me in. There were tons of singles from the album, though admittedly it so full of great songs, that it was difficult to argue that none of them were worthy picks. It all started off with a double A-single of High And Dry and Planet Telex, the latter's abrasive squall offset by the former's soft-yet-brittle side. 

There was very nearly two helpings of Tracey Thorn. Reluctantly, Massive Attack's Protection had to go, justified by the fact that they appeared in the 1994 selection. Of the two picks, in the end it just had to be the Todd Terry remix of Missing by Everything But The Girl. 

I loved the original and the remixes that accompanied the single's original release in 1994. Todd Terry gave the song a whole new lease of life - and audience - when his remix rocketed Missing to #3 in the UK in November 1995. And with that, the confidence for Everything But The Girl to take a divergent musical path that led to a run of great albums in subsequent years.

 

Given the three decade anniversary, I was keen to include something from the UK Top 40 as at 16th February 1995. But jeez, the record buying public didn't half make it difficult.

 

Celine Dion and Annie Lennox at #1 and #2 respectively. Cotton Eye Joe by Rednex and cover of Total Eclipse Of The Heart (I mean, why?) by Nicki French in the Top 10. A few places down, Jimmy Nail and Sting both with songs about cowboys (though at least Jimmy's was written by Paddy McAloon). It's not until #20 that the first half decent song appears, with Mansize Rooster by Supergrass. 

Thankfully, a new entry that week at #38 saved the day. Down By The Water by Polly Jean Harvey was the first single from third album To Bring You My Love and ends this 1995 mixtape on a suitably sinister note.

 

It's no spoiler to say that next weekend will look at 1996 and 1997. Life-changing in so many ways...but was the music any good?

 

Well, if I mention Spice Girls, Babylon Zoo, Gina G, Elton John, Aqua and Teletubbies, you'll no doubt be thrilled to know that none of them will be appearing here!

 

1) Original (Radio Edit): Leftfield ft. Toni Halliday

2) Tow Truck (Chemical Brothers Mix): The Sabres Of Paradise

3) Bullet (Bitten 7"): Fluke

4) Adored And Explored (7" Edit By The Beatmasters): Marc Almond

5) Waking Up (Album Version): Elastica

6) Yes (Edit): McAlmont & Butler

7) High And Dry (Album Version): Radiohead

8) Missing (Todd Terry Club Mix) (Blanco/Eternal Radio Edit): Everything But The Girl

9) Common People (7" Edit): Pulp

10) Try, Try, Try (Album Version): Julian Cope

11) A Girl Like You (Album Version): Edwyn Collins

12) Down By The Water (Album Version): PJ Harvey

12th February 1995: To Bring You My Love (#38): 12

19th February 1995: Elastica (#13): 5

5th March 1995: The Bends (#17): 7

19th March 1995: Original EP (#18): 1

7th May 1995: Fantastic Star (#25): 4

7th May 1995: Versus EP (#77): 2

28th May 1995: Common People EP (#2): 9

28th May 1995: Yes EP (#8): 6

16th July 1995: Gorgeous George (#4): 11

23rd July 1995: Bullet EP (#23): 3

6th August 1995: 20 Mothers (#24): 10

19th November 1995: Missing EP (#3): 8

Side Two (46:11) (GD) (M)

What Did You Wish For? What Did You Fear?

More festive fun today with Aimee Mann and Michael Penn, performing their song Christmastime on The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn on 15th December 2000. This post is dedicated to Rol from My Top Ten and someone who's been a fan of the Mann from the start.

I was much, much later to the party and oddly enough, it was her festive offerings (of which there are many) that drew me in. Christmastime is an original song, [warning: bad pun alert] penned by husband Michael Penn (older brother of Sean and Chris), producer Jon Brion and of course Aimee herself, if the lyrics didn't make it obvious.

I've not seen this TV clip before but I've long owned a version of this song on the 1996 album Just Say Noël. It's an alternative Christmas compilation released on Geffen, featuring a dozen tracks by label artists, mixing up cover versions of traditional and more contemporary songs with original compositions. 

Christmastime first appeared the same year on the soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson's debut film, Hard Eight and it's been re-recorded several times since. The studio version is full of the usual festive (jingle) bells and whistles, but I also like this slightly different arrangement for television. Aimee's voice is of course the element that lifts it to another plane.

 

If the annual tweak and reissue of Now That's What I Call Xmas and the prospect of Christmas songs by Ed Sheeran & Elton John, Michael Buble or Sam Ryder have you reaching for bucket to puke in, then Just Say Noël is a pretty decent alternative and relatively easy to find secondhand or online.

The album kicks off with Beck's take on a traditional song with The Little Drum Machine Boy. There's an extract on You Tube at just under two-and-a-half minutes but be warned: the album version clocks in at over seven minutes, by which time the novelty of Beck rapping has worn off, if I'm honest. Cracking bassline, though.

Sonic Youth up next with a surprisingly faithful cover of comedian/actor Martin Mull's 1972 song, Santa Doesn't Cop Out On Dope. Well, when I say faithful, I mean in the sense of their Ciccone Youth covers of Into The Groove and Addicted To Love: structurally accurate replicas but put through the 'Yoot' mangle. Even more surprising, it's actually less disturbing than the original.

From 'Yoot' to The Roots' cover of the De La Soul perennial Millie Pulled A Pistol On Santa. I like The Roots and while it's inevitably not a patch on the hip hop trio, it's worth a listen or two.

Just Say Noël is not all downtempo, downtrodden music either. XTC make a belated appearance here with their 1983 single Thanks For Christmas. It ticks all the boxes for being a festive smash but failed to make a dent in the UK chart. This is possibly (and no doubt intentionally) due to the single being released as The Three Wise Men not XTC, with songwriting credited to Balthazar, Kaspar and Melchior rather than Partridge, Moulding and Gregory. As soon as Andy's voice kicks in though, you know you're in for a treat.

My final seasonal selection from Just Say Noël is Gloria by Elastica, which first appeared as a 'B-side' to third single Waking Up in, er, February 1995 and would prove to be the band's biggest hit, coming in at #13 on it's week of release. It's got all of the Elastica hallmarks: thumping drum intro, strident bass, fuzzy guitar and Justine's slightly snotty vocals and original lyrics over a very familiar melody. What's not to love?