Sulk,
“Back in Bloom”
Anyone up for a Madchester revival? You know it’s going to happen sooner or later, so let’s get it out of the way now, shall we?
Actually, although Sulk’s previous single “Wishes” (their debut, I think) was a full on Stone Roses/The Charlatans-y sounding track – sun-dappled ’60s psychedelia through a filter of jangly late-’80s indie – “Back in Bloom” is more representative of what was around during that ’91-’93 window between Madchester and Britpop when UK indie was in [an interesting] flux. This is more like your Ride, and “All in the Mind” era Verve (ie before the dad-rock anthems of The Verve) : all expansive, sky-scraping guitars and vague lyrics about, I don’t know, girls and waves and stars and euphemisms for drug taking. The usual.
At the moment my interest in this is total nostalgia wank. I can’t seem to help it, I’m afraid. This sound – the sound from my youth and early 20s – is a part of my DNA, and my response to it is purely Pavlovian. In fact a lot of my favourite new music of the past year is down to familiarity, which, I suppose, is an age thing. Good or bad, that’s how it is.
But the sound of The Stone Roses, of course, was itself a throwback, to the music of twenty odd years before, and now we have young Sulk – a throwback to the throwback, and as distant from the Stone Roses as the Stone Roses were from The Byrds and The Beatles . It’ll be interesting to see how Sulk progress from here, if they progress at all.
