Search - Membranes :: Best of the Membranes

'Everyone's Going Triple Bad Acid, Yeah!'

Paul Ess. | Holywell, N.Wales,UK. | 09/17/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I'm not sure you can apply 'Best of' to the Membranes. It doesn't fit cosily with their world view. They, and the kind of 'industry' that promotes 'Best ofs' are not comfortable bedfellows.



The Membranes were cheerfully awkward, sniggering-ly belligerent and in their own minds anyway; sexy, subversive and vital.



They made unnervingly loud pop music without conscience or deference. It's the kind of sound scientists invent to set off earthquakes. A helicopter gunship attack on Las Vegas. You don't wonder HOW they're doing it, you're just glad they do.



From modest alt-pop beginnings ('Ice-Age' sounds like a failed Dr Who theme) through the fine Rondelet singles 'Muscles' and 'High St Yanks', stopping for a deranged 'I Am Fish Eye' on the way to the final lunacy of 'Kafka's Dad' and 'Tatty Seaside Town'; 'Best of' (I'm starting to like it, it could catch on...) just about works.



It's not a certified 5-star classic by a long way, some of the stuff (particularly in the middle ) just doesn't work however hard you chew it, but as a whole it has enough goodly racket to keep the slavering wolf nailed gorily down (although some of this row is monstrous, the Membranes' are less the big bad wolf - more the three little pigs).



Some of it's overtly political, though this particular nobelium's raison d'etre isn't to render you unconscious by dogma. It's a side order, to go with the main course of raw, red meat - but through it all, you get a vivid sense of singer John Robb's corrosive bite and juvenile humour. It's kind of anti-fashion, bombastic Benny Hill, for people who REALLY wanna wind up their Springsteen playing neighbours.



Very much an ugly sister to Adam's 'Friend or Foe', there's a definite air of something worthwhile emerging from abject failure. Like Adam, a long-gone caring/worrying about critical appraisal (unlike Morrissey who's obsessed with it) leads to previously maligned artists, released from the pressure, producing class.



Forever tongue-in-cheek, forever laughing at the grimmest of life-scenario's; the Membranes deserve to be remembered for more than just coming from Blackpool and touring behind the (then) Iron Curtain for 50 weeks of the year,

I wouldn't mind betting it was the bassy rumbling of 'Spike Milligan's Tape Recorder' that initially loosened the bricks of the Berlin Wall, not diplomacy.



I'm not sure how influential they were, I can hear them everywhere, but that means nothing, just that I miss them."