94. The Primitives - Stop Killing Me (Lazy)

Three weeks at number one from 21st March 1987

BAMALAMALAMALAMA…. Rarely do singles begin with such an abrasive attack of guitars, right from the very first second, before putting their bristles down again. Most groups, even alternative ones, are aware of the need to consider the delicate sensibilities of radio listeners and save their noisiest moments for later on in the single. Coventry’s The Primitives couldn’t have given a damn in this instance, though, putting their loudest attack right at the start of the single, then never quite hitting that peak again.

That said, The Primitives were an odd bunch to start with, creating slightly misshapen alternative pop whose influences were obvious (and tantalisingly fashionable) but were stretched into an unforced coolness of their own. Early songs liberally utilised the feedback screeching beloved of the Jesus & Mary Chain, the simple pop attack of The Ramones, Motown choruses, and the scratchiness of the Shop Assistants and The Flatmates, topped off with their own unique weapon in lead singer Tracey Tracey. While other female vocalists in the indie chart communicated with anger, conviction, sweetness or heartbreak, sometimes all in the same song, Tracey usually rolled her eyes with impatience. You can hear the disdain in almost every Primitives song at this point (bar “Thru The Flowers”) – perfectly enunciated, softly sung. Previous single “Really Stupid” is a prime example, taking its very title from the tired, understated insult that peppers the song.

It’s close to punk rock, but punks tended to sneer forcefully rather than seem utterly, offhandedly above whoever they were addressing. Tracey’s vocal style is actually quite chilling as a result; she feels like every woman who wearily sighed at your weak jokes, or gave you steely glances across a club dancefloor to pre-warn you that your chances with her were nil. Whether her style has the same effect on women (making them feel as if she is unapproachable and cooler-than-thou) is something I’ve never asked, but from a male perspective there’s something inherently but relatably threatening about it. She gave the impression of being somebody who Took No Shit without needing to heavily articulate the fact.

“Stop Killing Me” combines her vocals with guitars which skid off in various directions at different moments, beginning with that immediate machine gun fire, then settling on a distorted Ramones riff, then chiming beautifully in the chorus, then get steadily more gnarly until feedback starts to bleed around the edges. It is a very sharp, short and simple pop song at heart – Tracey even “ba ba ba bas” in the chorus, like a back-up singer with a soda pop in one hand – but what it lacks in complexity, it makes up for in its many flavours of menace. Insouciance and noise meet melody and friction, and it manages in two minutes what some singles fail to achieve in five; something that’s thrilling and hooky but also a little bit alienating and challenging at the same time. “Just keep away from me/ ‘cos you’re killing me” sings Tracey, and you believe that not only might she mean it, but she may be directing it at you.

By this point, the music press were beginning to get seriously excited by the group, which seemed to represent everything about British alternative rock they loved rolled together into one package. Tracey’s charisma and the rest of the band’s obvious love of pop hooks made them seem like one of the few groups in the late eighties indie charts who stood a strong chance in the outside world, and the media cuttings piled up quickly.

In time, they would be referred to as being part of the “Blonde” movement, a particularly unimaginative and press contrived scene which rather reductively grouped vaguely alt-leaning bands together who had blonde female singers. As a result, The Primitives found themselves lumped in with Transvision Vamp, The Darling Buds and The Parachute Men, despite only really having anything in common with one of those acts.

Such idleness and borderline misogyny from the music press was fleeting and quickly forgotten, and the group ended up floating far above it when they finally signed to RCA and managed a major Top Five hit with “Crash”. Its parent album “Lovely” sits in my record collection, and sands down the rougher edges of their sound slightly, but places the abrasion alongside flowery pop-psych, bright sunshine melodies and occasional bursts of almost Cocteaus-styled haziness (“Ocean Blue” feels almost as if its pushing at the shoegaze door three years too early). A cynic might argue that the group were having their cake and eating it – trying to be all things to all the different kinds of inky music press reading people – but they never quite lose their sense of self throughout, and the final results make for a surprisingly even listen. Even “Stop Killing Me” finds a natural home right next to the tranquil buoyancy of “Out Of Reach”.

The album only just failed to follow “Crash” into the national top five, but sold incredibly well for an alternative record, bagging the group a gold disc and a lot of music press and major label goodwill. By the following year, though, their follow-up album “Pure” only just managed a place inside the Top 40, and a crisis meeting was allegedly held at RCA asking if Tracey’s new deep red hair colour was to blame. Seldom in rock history has hair been regarded as such a central factor in a group’s successes and failings.

76. Half Man Half Biscuit - The Trumpton Riots (Probe Plus)

Two weeks at number one from 22nd March 1986

If you love neatly splicing things into sub-genres, and you feel very strongly that groups and artists have clear "neighbourhoods" which cannot be disputed, here’s where things get awkward. Way back at the end of 1984, The Toy Dolls climbed to number one in the indie charts with “Nellie The Elephant”. Not only was that the last major punk hit in the National Charts, I was also going to argue that it was the last big gasp of the Punk Pathetique sub-genre of Oi! Except…

There are critics and punk fans out there who will argue that Half Man Half Biscuit are part of that Gary Bushell adjacent patch. I can’t find any evidence to suggest that the group referred to themselves as such, but even if they didn’t, these views exist. The counter-claims against them are obviously numerous; the differences between The Toy Dolls, The Test Tube Babies, Splodgenessabounds and Half Man Half Biscuit couldn’t be more obvious. The Splodges looked quite striking in their own way, but indulged in facile dingbattery. The Dolls were/are hyper, whacky, squeaky and cartoonish, overgrown excitable children kicking each other’s tricycles whose handlebars were smeared in melted chocolate. 

HMHB, on the other hand, were – and are – another prospect altogether. Dour, scruffy, despondent, moping and despairing they may have been, but they often churned out comedic lyrical phrases which seemed anything but lazy and effortless. Their debut album “Back In The DHSS” was a shambling cornucopia of observations about children’s television, ageing comic actors (Bob Todd) and “Give Us A Clue” approved national treasures (Nerys Hughes, Una Stubbs, Lionel Blair), spliffs and snooker referees (Len Gangley). Punk Pathetique? I'd argue their styles and methods bore more resemblance to their fellow city-dwellers and beat poets The Liverpool Scene (give "Baby" a virtual spin to get the idea). 

The album was recorded as the test-run of a new eight-track facility in Liverpool where Nigel Blackwell worked as a caretaker following seven years of unemployment. “The caretaker’s band”, as they were somewhat disparagingly known by his colleagues, were allowed to give the desk its first dummy run and the album was recorded for the mate’s rate of £40. They handed the resulting tape around to record companies more in hope than expectation; Factory Records politely and predictably passed on it, but local record store Probe picked it up for their backroom label.

“Back In The DHSS” has a slightly rushed, demo-level sound as a result of its thrifty beginnings, but that only works in its favour. The underproduced sounds collide perfectly with lyrics which provide endless hints to Blackwell’s lifestyle (and possibly the band’s) – his world is one of front room televisions being switched on in the daytime at the height of summer, the heavy curtains fully drawn to stop the sun’s rude interruptions. Spliff and tobacco smoke hang in the air, while he sits on a pouffe passively absorbing the day’s televisual offerings, occasionally getting frustrated but feeling too powerless and groggy to even change the station. Trumpton comes on. He laughs his first stoned giggle of the day, imagining the central characters to be dabbling with drugs. We've all been there. 

As a result, the album felt as if it accidentally found three target markets – students, the unemployed, and stoners. All were able to recognise themselves in these beaten-up novelty folk-punk ditties, able to not only laugh along but rub their eyes in despair. Here’s where the punk pathetique comparisons fall apart; The Toy Dolls and Splodgenessabounds were celebrations of stupidity and passive consumption. HMHB seemed, consciously or otherwise, to be wanting to walk away from it but found they were snookered at every turn, empty-pocketed prisoners to the worst of eighties light entertainment culture.

They were also strangely obsessed with the gentle stop-motion children’s programme “Trumpton”, which besides forming part of the album in “Time Flies By (When You’re The Driver Of A Train)” (“speeding out of Trumpton with a cargo of cocaine”) now became the backdrop to their debut single “The Trumpton Riots”. In many respects, it’s more of the same, except perhaps even more lo-fi. 

53. The Smiths - William, It Was Really Nothing (Rough Trade)

Number one for four weeks from w/e 8th September 1984

Maybe it’s because I’m a Wire fan, but I’ve always admired compactness and brevity in pop*. The structure of the traditional pop or rock song usually involves heavy repetition, and however much indie groups claim to be outside the concerns of commerciality, they usually obey one of pop’s key principles – if you don’t hammer the fuck out of your song’s strongest hook, not only will it be less likely to get airplay, but any airplay it does receive won’t be noticed as much by the listeners.

By 1984, producers and bands were filling singles to their maximum run times, stuffing the turkey baster with the chorus and then ramming the grooves right up to the record label with its repetition. Even outside of some (mostly pointless and hastily cobbled together) extended twelve inch versions, songs often sprawled beyond their natural run-times and outstayed their welcomes.

“William, It Was Really Nothing” is probably my favourite Smiths song because it steps so far outside this usual structure while also fizzing to the brim with ideas. It comes across as a pile-up of grievances, a betrayed rant in song form, starting with an almost jaunty melody from Marr, before Morrissey whines “The rain falls hard on a humdrum town/ This town has dragged you down”, repeats himself, then adds “and everybody’s got to live their lives”. You’re immediately invited to envisage him strolling agitatedly through some red-brick suburban overspill with no discerning features.

It then makes a huge lyrical leap, using the town not as a reason to sympathise with the predicament of the person the song is aimed at, but to accuse them of building their own prison. William, whose life is “nothing”, is accused of staying with a fat girl – the only bit of the song I feel uncomfortable with, surely the main problem with her isn’t her obesity? - whose only aspiration in life seems to be marriage.

The song feels split in two halves. The first section sets the scene, and Marr and the rest of the Smiths are sprightly and busy throughout, setting you up for the idea that this is going to be an antsy tune about suburban ennui. Following the lines “God knows I’ve got to live mine”, though, things shift, the guitar begins to twang on a despairing line, then we get to the chorus and Marr’s fingers seem to blur through a furiously picked but very pretty and Byrdsian jangle. The chorus repeats once before the whole lot bends and folds like a house of cards, leaving only some ambient inconclusive guitar chords ringing.

It feels as if a tornado has appeared, thrashed around the edges of town, then left a few stray pieces of metal to rattle and sing out as it collapses. The effect is spectacular and surprisingly pretty – rarely do you hear a piece of music where betrayal and fury sounds so fussy and intricate, like a carefully designed doily with “fuck you” written in the centre – a song about courtship and romance where Marr’s guitar lines chime slightly like wedding bells in places, but do so with agitation not celebration.

Morrissey mentioned that “William It Was Really Nothing” was his attempt at writing an anti-marriage record for men, noting that women were always being told to leave their partners on singles, but men had little advice of their own to go on. There’s a slight tone of misogyny to the fact that he picked a “fat girl” as the central focus for “William” – I’m surprised female Smiths fans stood for this – but the song dares to observe that some women become unhealthily obsessed with marriage and begin to use it as a bargaining chip in relationships in a way men more often won’t.