First Listen

For a music writer, I have substantial holes in my music knowledge. I’ve not listened to much of seminal UK duo Autechre, influential hip hop outfit the Wu-Tang Clan or, I’m ashamed to say, techno pioneer Pitbull. And in 2002, when The Streets dropped their acclaimed ‘Original Pirate Material’, I was in the first flush of my music production career, such as it was, and single-mindedly ignored every 2000s non-house club trend, including dubstep, electroclash and minimal techno.

Anyway, I’ve got a note from my mum to give to my teacher that explains it all. However, as ‘Original Pirate Material’ celebrates its 20th birthday this year, it seems like a good time to finally check it out. Always up to date, that’s me.

The synthetic strings and tasty minimal 2-step beat of ‘Turn the Page’ kick things off. Mike Skinner’s unmistakable accent is right up front in the mix, his flow simultaneously languid and relentless. When the bass comes in halfway through and triggers some goose bumps, I’m sold. I even gave it a rewind and we’re only on track one. I’m a sucker for a set of ponderous chords and a delayed-drop bass-line, who isn’t, right?

‘Has It Comes to This’ is next, a soft-focus easygarage paean that is strangely affecting, somehow tapping into an emotion-triggering frequency via some clicky UKG beats, plinky piano snippets and wandering sub-bass. When the vaguely ska-flavoured rhythm and trombone licks à la Rico Rodriguez of ‘Let’s Push Things Forward’ drop, I suddenly get why The Streets were compared to The Specials. And just like The Specials, Skinner excels at finding the universal in his low-key observations of everyday life. Side note: I get that I’m late to this, but ‘Around here we say birds not bitches’ is a great line.

Next track gets a bit aggro, then the following one, ‘Geezers Need Excitement’, starts strong with a flurry of smart, interlocking wordplay set to a moody synth beat, but it sounds like they got stoned and forgot about the chorus until the album was due to be pressed and had to knock something up super-quick. See also ‘Don’t Mug Yourself’. Is this half-finished, don’tcare aesthetic part of The Streets’ appeal? Because to my Streets-virgin ears, they throw away a few chances at really good songs by including choruses that sound like they were bought in a pub car park from a bloke off craigslist. Is this like punk, celebrating amateurism, glorifying the shambolic? Also, I have another question: regarding instrumental track ‘Who Got the Funk?’, is this The Streets’ equivalent of when The Beatles would include a novelty track for Ringo on their albums?

Aside from that tingly bass moment in the opening track, album highlights include ‘Same Old Thing’ which absolutely slaps at top whack, and most of ‘Weak Become Heroes’. Most? Yes, most. As I listened to this for the first time, all the praise for Skinner as a keen-eyed chronicler of British life seemed deserved. He perfectly describes that slo-mo, E-glow shared experience of a debut pinger, the naive piano line matching his eyes-wide-open, loved-up tone. But after setting the scene so pitch-perfectly it suddenly gets super awkward with a worthy shout out to umm, Walker, Oakenfold, Holloway (poor old Trevor Fung never gets his due respect in this narrative, does he?) and recovering psychic energy-node Danny Rampling. Clunky; needs an edit.

So ‘Original Pirate Material’: a great debut album with some genuine goose-bump moments and a couple of fist-bump moments too. Flawed, as all decent art is, it’s uncompromising, authentic, charismatic, and a little too (deliberately?) ramshackle for my tastes in places too. But I love that these tales of love, music, scoring herb, eating chips, being skint and timeless weekends getting high listening to UKG have been recorded, so that long after we’re gone, the future will get to hear them.

‘So let’s put on our classics and we’ll have a little dance, shall we?’10_DISCO_POGO