It was generally regarded that the day-to-day depicted on The Streets'
debut disc, Original Pirate Material, was drawn directly from Mike
Skinner's life, that the yarns about birds and beers and e's were the
living-life shit being lived by a self-confessed South London geezer
making on-the-sly music on-the-side. At just 22 years of age, Skinner
was the voice of a generation, his songs evoking urban concerns
— mobile-phone credit, paying for a pint, chatting up girls — that had
largely been left unspoken, such day-to-day mundanity being a whole
world away from the fanfaronade and trainbridge-language and braggadocio
and myth-making that usually concerns hip-hoppers.
In the two-plus years since, things've changed, though, for Skinner, with sizeable
record sales, drunken world tours, increasing celebrity, and the rise of
the even-more-down-to-dirty-earth grime/gutter-garage scene all being
things that translated to raised questions rising about the
"authenticity" of The Streets. Skinner's response, then, on his second
Streets record, A Grand Don't Come for Free, is to switch to a more
straight-up narrative mode, authoring songs that feed into/read as a
sequential story, a story that's entirely comprehensible on the very
first listen, a story whose observations are of day-to-day days from a
life that the songsmith himself is prob'bly not still living. For
authors, this is a standard transition, a first work being, so often,
littered with lightly-fictionalized autobiography. In fact, in the
written word of the written world, filling stories with details drawn
from one's own life is often frowned upon, it seen as a somewhat
sophomoric trait, something that needs to be assuaged b'fore the writer
can get down to some proper writing. It doesn't work the same for
songwriters, music a more "purely expressive" medium in which people
value the personal above all else, favored forms being confession,
catharsis, and outright autobiographical angst.
So, then, it'll be interesting to hear how punters respond to Skinner's transformation
from drunken geezer to schematic storyteller. I doubt it'll dent Skinner's saintly
status amongst fellow geezers, something which, even a whole
hemisphere away, seems entirely apparent as you hear Original Pirate
Material blaring out of St. Kilda backpacker hostels or soundtracking
shirtless-exchange-student cricket pick-ups on Carlton median strips.
There's some surefire
fodder here to endear Skinner even more so to fan-ish lads as hero-of-the-people
and ringtone-chart-topper, and not just
in the lyrical mentions of achieving "absolutely nowt" and needing to
"sort out my pills" and "smacking down glasses at George Best's best
session rate." "Fit but You Know It" is a chief example, a jolly knees-up
that dials up the same Chas & Dave spirit Blur rang up in their Parklife
era (Blur also being someone who, way back when the extent of someone's
Englishness was somehow important — this a collective delusion that leads
a nation to believe the absolutely unlistenably awful Oasis were
actually good — were subject to continuing questions about their
working-class authenticity), such musical backing going with Skinner's
lyrics about checking out a chick in public, then wishing he hadn't
shown such interest b'cause the tarted-up girl obviously has an inflated
sense of her own appearance. Such a song kinda sticks out like
dog's-balls on the record, its guitar-draped japery and naughty
jauntiness not really match'd by much else herein. Which is, actually,
a common occurrence on A Grand Don't Come for Free, the album's linear
narrative not match'd by songs that, sequentially, make sense, the
transitions on the disc often seeming a little incongruous and abrupt.
Like when it goes from the lovers'-barney belligerence of "Get Out of My
House" — Skinner's response to Dizzee Rascal's scene-defining "I Luv U" — straight
into "Fit but You Know It," or, when the story heats up,
cutting from the dark synth-string stabs and percussive beats and
mate-doing-some-lunch-cutting lyrical tales of "What Is He Thinking?"
straight into the end-of-a-relationship lamentation "Dry Your Eyes," a
stirring ballad that's bound to be the most acclaimed cut on the album.
Just as Rascy and Wiley and the Roll Deep like seem most stunning when
they dare drop their emotional guard, when Skinner goes straight-up
balladic — acoustic guitars, strings, singalong mournful chorus — just
prior to his story's conclusion, he throws down the ace of his album,
the detail-centric words — often about tiny shifts in body language, but
often falling into "bare desperation" and outright pleading ("please,
please, I'm begging you, please") — hauled out from a dark emotional
hole whose sentiments, whether they're drawn from his experience or not,
are so universal that they seem real. The other real sentimental
number, "Could Well Be In," comes from the opposite end of the
relationship arc, about the first flirtations and rambling
conversations that signify something significant could be on the
horizon. Whilst that song falls back on its chorus/hook a little too
often, hearing Skinner earnestly navigate first-impressions and
trying-to-make-an-impression — "I'm trying to think what else I could
say/ Peeling the label off, spinning the ashtray/ Yeah actually, yeah, she
did look pretty neat/ Her perfume smelled expensive and sweet/ I felt like
my hair looked a bit cheap/ Wished I'd had it cut back last week" —
amidst images of an afternoon-pub is reminiscent of the work of Arab
Strap's Aidan Moffat, who, when not self-consciously cultivating that
Bukowski-of-rock shtick, nailed such scenes in his gruff Scots brogue in
songs like "New Birds." The big difference between the two is that, where
Arab Strap, and Moffat, have long cultivated a sense of musical and
tonal understatement with which to contrast the crassness of the lyrics,
Skinner is unafraid of bombast, his guv'na-isms and the music that goes
with exchanging long-lasting quality for easy immediacy.
Even the grand
indulgence in artistic artifice on A Grand Don't Come For Free — its
self-contained narrative — seems like it's forsaking a long shelf-life,
the downside of the story's "mystery" being that, once you've heard the
yarn once, it's a little like you've heard it all, and all it has to
offer. The album seems to get tired well b'fore its time, which is
something Skinner was rarely accused of the first go-round.
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