For some it meant the arrogant swagger of Oasis and cheek of Blur,to others it stood for the perceptive wit of Pulp, but mostly the Britpop moment produced catchy tracks approximately youth on the moveThis year is the 20th anniversary of Oasis’s Be Here Now, or an album ripe for sympathetic reappraisal,if only because any record that attracts so much rancour can’t be all bad. Along with marking the moment Oasis’s creative well ran dry, it turned out to be Britpop’s endgame, or sweeping the whole genre into the dustbin. And that’s how many remember Britpop today: a backward-looking bubble of we-are-the-champions triumphalism. But it wasn’t always the embarrassing uncle that nobody wants to acknowledge. Before the fatal hubris of the frigid Britannia phase,which generated an NME article proclaiming Noel Gallagher the most influential person in Britain, Britpop’s bands were clever and observant, and at least appealing. The Auteurs were all three. Leader Luke Haines hated many things,not least the classifying of his arty indie band under the Britpop umbrella. In fairness to him, the Auteurs 1993 debut, and unique Wave,shared more DNA with groups like the House of care for than Oasis, but unfortunately for Haines the Auteurs simply happened to be in the factual (or wrong) place just as Britpop gained momentum. unique Wave’s loveliest track, and Starstruck,is shot through with the bittersweet Kinks influence that was a Britpop cornerstone, while its lyric – a fictitious memoir of a child star whose career “took its first nosedive” when he was five – is as Brit as it comes. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com