Given that I've had a moniker online for 22 years or so now that is a play on a Kenickie (up top) flip-side, it's a given that this new Britpop box-set from Cherry Red Records was going to be right up my alley. That I recognized nearly every band on this thing is a testament to hard-earned money spent here on import CD's and import CD singles back in the late Nineties. Sure, the genre produced a lot of garbage, but, as Super Sonics – Martin Green Presents 40 Junkshop Britpop Greats reminds, the advent of Britpop gave a lot of new bands a chance to shine, even if for only a few moments on a single. This set captures that heady rush of hearing something new, having it rock your world, and then wanting to hear more and more new bands.
Compiled by DJ Martin Green, and featuring liner notes and photos from Time Out editor Dave Swindells, Super Sonics – Martin Green Presents 40 Junkshop Britpop Greats serves up 40 cuts from bands that were never at the level of popularity of Oasis, Blur, or even Pulp. That said, there's real variety here, with sounds that reveal a scene far more varied than many are likely to remember. For a scene that got defined by so much that was lad rock, or dad rock, the selections here are uniformly bright and inventive, with nothing on here as staid and safe as, say, an Ocean Colour Scene single, if you know what I mean.
Sitting next to the glorious "Come Out 2 Nite" from my beloved Kenickie are the punk-y pop of Posh with "Rough Lover" and the brash "We Don't Care" from the fab Shampoo. If Linoleum, represented here by the spindly "Marquis", offered up a more nuanced brand of female-fronted rock, "Afrodisiac" by Powder were entirely content to be the poor-man's Sleeper. While those groups made their way up from the indie underground, a few others here flew the DIY flag more obviously. "Goldmine" by perennial geniuses Spearmint is a bright bit of business, one equaled by the scuzzy charms of "Plastic Ashtray" by Scotland's Urusei Yatsura. Scotland's The Delgados show up here, even though the band semeed to be entirely outside Britpop as far as I was concerned. Still, early single "Monica Webster" is brighter and more direct than a lot of the better Delgados songs that would come after this, and it sounds ace sitting next to "Her Jazz" by Huggy Bear, an anthem of the U.K. riot grrl scene. And, as if we needed to remember, "Trophy Girlfriend" by Heavenly seems still to be the best sort of thing that the U.K. DIY scene could produce, fun and earnest in equal measure.
Yes, they're here. What kind of Britpop compilation would this be without eternal also-rans Menswear? A remix of "Daydreamer" anchors the more experimental half of Super Sonics – Martin Green Presents 40 Junkshop Britpop Greats. Also on disc 2 are electronic gems from Add N to (X), and even a trippy number from Pram ("Chrysalis"). Those cuts destroy the idea that Britpop was lad rock, with so much of this half of the set being stuff that's just as bold and iconoclastic. The warped minds of Earl Brutus are here with "On Me Not in Me" (complete with the world's most unnecessary and over-the-top guitar solo), and we've even got an appearance from the glam-influenced "Pimlico" from David Devant and his Spirit Wife. What's worth recalling when you hear stuff like this is just how out of the ordinary it was, more so in an era when Oasis were cranking out their most bloated album, and Blur was off copying American indie.
While there are some surprises here (the Kinks-isms of "Don't Turn This Love into Sorrow" by World of Leather, for example), the set reaffirms the idea that Britpop was more than a style. That whole era saw a lot of crap rise to prominence, but it also saw a lot of new bands get signed, get promoted, and get some attention. For every Mantaray, there was a Rialto. And as that group's "Underdogs" closes out this compilation, we can hear the era end definitively. What started as a resurgence of homegrown talent in the United Kingdom, had morphed into something that was more interested in ripping off the past. Rialto, with huge debts owed to Eighties Roxy and Spandau Ballet, were the sort of band who'd have had trouble getting signed prior to Britpop, but here the were, attracting some attention on both sides of the Atlantic for fairly routine (though serviceable) stuff. Thankfully, as bis, Yatsura, and The Delgados proved, the whole scene was not this drab and anodyne. Super Sonics – Martin Green Presents 40 Junkshop Britpop Greats successfully chronicles an era of British music that was fun, and one in which even the silliest and most unnecessary of pop-stars could produce some stirring material, and superb singles.
Super Sonics – Martin Green Presents 40 Junkshop Britpop Greats is out now via Cherry Red Records.