It's Great When You're Straight...Yeah [debut]
release date: Aug. 7, 1995
format: cd
[album rate: 4 / 5] [4,02]
producer: Danny Saber, Stephen Lironi, Shaun Ryder
label: Radioactive Records - nationality: England, UK
Studio album debut by the Northern English quintet Black Grape released on the small independent American label Radioactive. The band was formed in 1993 on initiative of vocalist Shaun Ryder and dancer Bez [aka Mark Berry] shortly after the disbandment of the Happy Mondays. Together with vocalist Paul 'Kermit' Leveridge (of Ruthless Rap Assassins), guitarist Paul 'Wags' Wagstaff (Paris Angel), and drummer Ged Lynch (Ruthless Rap Assassins) they constitute Black Grape. However, this quintet nearly only contains two performing instrumentalists. Bez is credited 'vibes' but is commonly known as a dancer - at times equiped with maracas, so 'vibes' would mean something like good karma. Apart from sharing vocal roles, Paul Leveridge is credited as co-songwriter on half of the ten songs, whereas Ryder is songwriter and composer of all tracks, and that aside, no one else from the band are credited music on this album. Instead the music basically seems manufactured, organised and arranged by the producer-trio of Saber, Lironi, and Ryder. Co-producer Danny Saber is a multi-instrumentalist and here, he is credited on guitar, bass, and keyboards as well as being in charge of programming. He is also sound engineer and co-composer of four tracks. Other co-producer Stephen Lironi (guitarist & drummer of Altered Images) is credited on guitar and keyboards, and he is co-composer of two songs. Apart from that, other instrumentalists feature on some of the songs but it's quite evident that it's an album driven by Ryder and two multi-instrumentalists, and the perception of a band effort is merely a manufactured official image. According to Ryder (from his autobiography "Twisting My Melon"), American manager Gary Kurfirst had initially made contact with Ryder to hear what he was up to after The Mondays. Ryder had then sent him a few demos and Kurfirst had been ready to manage Ryder as solo artist but Ryder had wanted it to be a new band effort with Kurfirst then making the needed contacts. Just like Kermit and Ryder were on the same channel when speaking musical influenses, also Saber and Ryder had the same perception of how to arrange songs, and Lironi was there to secure a certain rock-feel to the songs as opposed to the bolder hip-hop direction ensured by Saber. In that sense, it's really just the right combination of musical talent to start with.
Naturally, the music shares traits with that of Happy Mondays. Some suggest it sounds more like a natural progression from
Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches (1990) than a move from the recent final album by The Mondays, and that's exactly what Ryder had wanted - also because his vision of
Yes Please! (Oct 1992) had been an album based on the style from the '90-album, but then he had sort of been stoved away on that. With Ryder as the dominant figure - as both songwriter, composer, co-producer and vocalist - it's no wonder that it reminds people of his former project. Unfairly, Shaun is at times reduced to an original and creative songwriter with a highly distinctive vocal, but he's more than just that. Initially, he played the guitar with his younger brother Paul playing bass, and from the beginning of The Mondays, he shared composer-role with the rest of the band, which both underlines his ear for music structure as well as his role in Black Grape. Without Shaun there would've been no Happy Mondays nor a Black Grape - a name, which alledgedly comes from when they were to sign the release contract and the management opted for a band name before they would go any further and Kermit came in with a handful of black grapes, and Shaun then used the situation to get the contract settled.
Musically, the album comes out as a new original conglomerate of styles. It's alt. dance and indie pop in a bolder electronic shape than that of The Mondays, and it mixes elements from neo-psychedelia, funk and soul. A few of the songs, e.g. "A Big Day in the North", "Shake Well Before Opening" and "Yeah Yeah Brother" (actually written for the ...Yes Please! album) more strongly continues the style of The Happy Mondays with an acid house-tone but the overall sensation is that of a coherent whole of more uptempo funky alt. dance.
The title is almost like the answer to Pills 'n' Thrills... saying it's (probably) better to stay away from substance abuse, and then also suggesting that it's (again: probably) not really gonna go that way. Again, Ryder has given his accounts on how they were all on various substances, from Guiness, weed, and Temazis - "Tramazi Parti" is actually taken from 'Temazis' (name for 'Temazepam', which Ryder had recently discovered), but that would be granted as an album song - which had led them (back) to heroin. And the strong psychedelic colours of the front cover showing a pop art photo of the infamous terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (aka Carlos the Jackal) follows closely in the footsteps of covers for Ryder's former band.
Music critics welcomed the album and it went straight to number #1 on the UK chart list. It was preceded by the the single release of track #1 peaking at #9, and the album was followed by two singles, tracks #2 and #4, respectively peaking at #8, and #17 in the UK.
I vividly recall the album as something I considered an improvement to the Happy Mondays. In retrospect, it hasn't faded all that much and still carries a certain amount of quality.
It may not be as significant as Pills 'n' Thrills... but I find it better as more poignant, better structured, showcasing better hooks, filled with great songs, explicit and funny lyrics, and then it's just one of my favourites of the nineties and therefore highly recommended.
[
allmusic.com, Vox 4,5 / 5,
NME 5 / 5, The Guardian, Mojo, Q Magazine 4 / 5 stars ]
