Justin Welch was only in Suede for six weeks, not terribly long but long enough for the drummer to strike up a friendship with guitarist Justine Frischmann, who departed the band herself in 1991 as her relationship with Blur’s Damon Albarn started to gum up the works – he wasn’t quite the Japanese conceptual artist to her Barney Gumble, but boy was she late to sessions a lot.
By the time Frischmann and Welch recorded an album together – alongside Donna Matthews on guitar and Annie Holland on bass – there was this thing called Britpop. As the cultural movement of Britpop developed, one wouldn’t have expected it to have offered much room to a female-majority garage band that fancied the pants off of its post-punk-art-punk influences, as opposed to its en vogue, male contemporaries. Frischmann’s relationship with Albarn lasted for much of the ‘90s – he was, evidently, much less sickened by her “Hitler haircut” than Thom Yorke – but the only direct impact he had on Elastica’s music was his occasional service as a session keyboardist.
Through their self-titled debut album, Elastica formed their own sense of progression in a culture not strictly designed for them. Where bigger Britpop bands weren’t necessarily basic parts guitar bands (depending on who you ask), Elastica pinched from the guitar bands of ‘70s punk and ‘80s rock-inclined new wave to merge with a songwriting/performance style that was a bit more of a fit for 1995. Not one song on the album feels regressive; despite undeserved plagiarism cases, Elastica’s love of Wire was far more meticulously-utilised than Oasis’s love of The Beatles.
The guitar riff of Connection is similar to that of Wire’s Three Girl Rhumba – you know, “THINK OF A NUMBER, DIVIDE IT BY TWO” – but I’m not sure how much you can really yell “thief” at somebody lifting from a simple, two-chord riff, even if its unsteadiness is parallel. Sure, resent Elastica for making something more popular out of a riff established by somebody else, but one may just as easily appreciate its snarker, its nastiness, its siren-like synths at the culmination of certain bars, and Justine’s profile as a singer, in which she christens herself the female alternative of the old school, nose-squeezing post-punk singer; your Jon King, your Mark E. Smith.
The chorus of Line Up has been accused to plagiarising Wire’s I Am the Fly – you know, “FLY IN THE, FLY IN THE OINTMENT” – but it’s a bit more of a ‘squint really hard and you might see it’ case, not that you can squint your ears, only place them closer to the speaker, which is ill-advised. Gone are Wire’s mucky guitar textures, swapped for a stinging, twisted metal in every guitar chord – poor thing’s being tortured – and a bluesy bassline that you could consider Annie Holland’s speciality; her playing on Car Song is evil, working together with guitar-drum combos that impersonate engines, traffic, and horn-honks, all in a satire of being won over by a quickie in a car. Also, Spaghetti Junction is referenced, winning over the Birmingham demographic.
Not to turn this review into a “this is why your accusations are unfounded” type rant, but Waking Up is a sort of compositional nod to The Stranglers’ No More Heroes. It’s a chord progression, it’s a mildly gothic, ‘80s punk strange, covered in reverb like onion on a steak, perhaps too much for some to ignore without resorting to a writing credit for The Stranglers. I’d back it up a little more, but there are better songs on the album. There are also worse, less meticulous songs – you know you’re not trying when your song with Indian instrumentation is called Indian Song.
The album’s punky preferences work wonders; not only is it unexpectedly snappy for a fifteen-song, near-forty-minute album, but it hangs onto punk being a popular entity in British media without shedding its core values too heavily – we’re a lot closer to Buzzcocks than we are 2000s pop punk. It is too riotous for Britpop, and too British for riot grrrl, but alongside the likes of Kenickie, Elastica’s raucousness and explosivity allowed it the potential categorisation of the across-the-pond equivalent to the latter. Justine’s default punk voice is actually quite similar to Jody Bleyle of Team Dresch (to clue you in, that also means I like her voice), which comes in handy over the riotous, uncontrolled Annie, psycho barbs of Hold Me Now (“it’s hard to make a stew when the meat keeps looking up at you”), and the ‘distortion with a few extra pounds’ of Stutter.
It’s even better when Elastica’s take on punk rock is more musically easy-going, favouring simple power chords on the Buzzcocks-esque All-Nighter, its reliance on energy proving that energy works, particularly on a song about finding energy from somewhere. Similarly, Vaseline snaps into a fun-loving Banana Splits nah-nah chorus.
It’s nice that Britain had its own conveyors of ‘90s Daria punk, even though, as stated, the album is much more than that; S.O.F.T.’s sliding, mechanical riff and big gladiator chorus will confirm as much; 2:1 hushed, weird vocal says ditto.
No matter how, Elastica forged their own path as Britpop developed – not that there was ever a dictionary definition on what Britpop should sound like as a genre. Their riffs were cheekier than those of Suede; their songs included a sense of humour often targeted by Blur and Pulp, but their humour, their satire, was entirely their own, snarky property. Their style of performance, in its best moments, was seldom studio-bound, rather live-like and spectacularly off-balance, like moshing in heels.
And in general conversation, the album is overlooked, because it wasn’t released by the big four, or The Verve or even Supergrass. That is in spite of its success as one of the all-time fastest-selling debut albums in the UK. But even in the extraordinary circumstance of history forgetting the bands that shaped the UK’s ‘90s, I will always vouch for Elastica’s self-titled as an album worth checking out.
Best tracks – Connection – Car Song – S.O.F.T. – All-Nighter.
Rating – 8 out of 10
