Nearly Perfect Albums #104

Original Pirate Material – The Streets (2002, Locked On Records)

‘Original Pirate Material’ illustrates in Mike Skinner’s own words “a day in the life of a geezer”. In it a variety of characters, daydreamers, drug takers, and (an awful lot of) drinkers amongst them take us on a journey where the mundane struggles of everyday life are relayed to us with charm, unabashed cockiness and in someway a naïve romanticism that music hadn’t seen in an awful long time.

For most of us the first we heard of Skinner and the Streets was on ‘Has It Come to This?, a wonky garage track that despite being recorded in Skinner’s bedroom, sounded ready for the dancefloor, with its breakbeats crackling over what sounds like a synth made on an old Casio keyboard and Mike Skinner sort of rapping, sort of well, talking, over the beat in a diluted West Midlands accent.   I’ve made that sound awful, but in reality it was excellent, and when Skinner told us all that he was all about “Sex, Drugs and on the Dole” everyone, sat up and took noticed and propelled him in to the Top Twenty, annoying garage aficionados and winning over indie kids in the process.

Has It Come to This? – The Streets (2002, Locked On Records)

The success of ‘Has It Come to This?’ meant that ultimately Skinner could finish recording this album.  When that was released, Skinner had already had a second top 20 hit with ‘Let’s Push Things Forward’ in which he told us what to expect – “this ain’t your archetypal street sound” – and he wasn’t wrong.  ‘Original Pirate Material’ is described by various people (including me when it first came out) as a garage album, largely due to the two step production and the twisty breakbeats, but in reality, this album owes more to the all night garage than it does the musical kind.

Let’s Push Things Forward – The Streets (2002, Locked On Records)

What essentially we got was an album full of tracks that almost perfectly blends tracks that are tragic, funny and at times tug on your heart strings until they just about snap.  The tracks are more stories, figments of everyday life about being skint, being in love, being drunk, being stoned and picking chicken off a vegetarian pizza and its great.  All of it.  Most of it.  I can take or leave ‘The Irony of It All’.

The Irony of It All – The Streets (2002, Locked On Records)

It does of course have its knockers.  Those that say that Skinner is a chancer who has recorded a spoken word album to a few tinny toy keyboard beats, I suspect those people have never listened to it all the way through, because ‘Original Pirate Material’ says what it is saying better because Skinner can’t sing, and pretty much makes no attempt to do so.  Take ‘It’s Too Late’, a proper album highpoint, a proper tearful heartbreaking track that sounds real and genuinely distressed and remorseful against the backdrop of sampled strings that play out a relationship breakdown.  It also contains the line “We met through a shared view, she loved me and I did too”, which is as close to songwriting genius as you will ever need to be where Mike Skinner is concerned (although he will top that when he writes ‘Dry Your Eyes’ a couple of years later).

It’s Too Late – The Streets (2002, Locked On Records)

I’m going to talk about the end of ‘Original Pirate Material’ largely because its outstanding, every second from the opening of that piano loop on ‘Weak Become Heroes’ which escalates into an ecstatic reverie, whilst at the same time allowing us to meet Skinner’s more sentimental side, you could argue that ‘Weak Become Heroes’ is the exact point when house music collides with the rave party era – and as it embraces, it abruptly gets shut down by the Man (or in this case The Criminal Justice Bill).

Weak Become Heroes – The Streets (2002, Locked On Records)

‘Who Dares Wins’ is a short almost beer soaked track that morphs sinisterly into another lonely sounding piano and then we are met with ‘Stay Positive’ which sees Skinner almost preaching from the pulpit of the church of meism (I ain’t helping you climb the ladder, I’m busy climbing mine…”about how life can feel bad, and that marvellously makes us see and believe the complete opposite because it could get worse, it’s a proper stand alone fist in the air cry of solidarity for the disenchanted, the angry, the drunk, the unlucky in love and every time I listen to it, goosebumps appear.

Stay Positive – The Streets (2002, Locked On Records)