As much as I thoroughly love the debut LP by Elastica, I do cringe at the fact that so many of their best tunes were total rip-offs:-mp3 : Elastica - Connection
mp3 : Wire - Three Girl Rhumba
mp3 : Elastica - Waking Up
mp3 : The Stranglers - No More Heroes
They didn't even begin to disguise their influences, but I don't think anyone can argue that the self-titled debut LP from 1995 is one of the best and most enduring of the Britpop era. Strangely enough, at a time when all sorts of unforgettable acts had 45s (or more accurately CD singles as vinyl was totally out of fashion) that went high in the charts, none of the four tracks lifted from Elastica went Top 10. The album however, did hit the #1 spot.
By the time the band got over all sorts of personnel problems and released their follow-up LP in 2000, their fan base had moved on to other things and they were more or less ignored. But I reckon they still made great music that owed a debt to so many folk, but at least they acknowledged it this time:-
mp3 : Elastica - How He Wrote Elastica Man
mp3 : The Fall - How I Wrote 'Elastic Man'
Now all that should all get your weekend off to a damn near perfect start.
Happy Listening
5 comments:
I couldn't agree more. Another excellent pairing would've been Elastica's "Line Up" against Wire's "I Am The Fly".
I've always been a bit more of a Chairs Missing fan than a Pink Flagger.
There was loads of Elastica vinyl! 7" and 12" singles + the vinyl version of the album was a thing of beauty, with a free flexi and booklet to treasure!
Ah Elastica...a great debut LP. It's a shame that their second album took so long, and by the time it came out in mid-2000 indie was totally unfashionable. The irony was that a year later, when Elastica announced they had split (and they issued a final 7" called 'The Bitch Don't Work), the Strokes and the White Stripes were leading the next charge. Ah well...
Elastica's debut album is one of my favorite moments of the mid-90s but they seriously lost the plot on the follow-up. It's one of those albums I pull out from time to time to make sure I didn't miss something but they replaced the sharp pop songs of the first album with blandness. Not the way to go.
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