The latest edition of the Getting into series looks at Half Man Half Biscuit’s second album, released in 1987. You can catch up on previous editions here.
As we quickly established, making sense of their early discography is a bit of a muddle as a result of various re-arranged reissues in different formats over the years. So I’m using the 8-song tracklist as per below, which represents the completely new songs that were included on the original (you can find these at the beginning of the ACD album, just to confuse matters further).
1. The Best Things in Life
2. D’Ye Ken Ted Moult
3. Reasons to Be Miserable (Part 10)
4. Rod Hull Is Alive – Why?
5. Dickie Davies Eyes
6. The Bastard Son of Dean Friedman
7. I Was a Teenage Armchair Honved Fan
8. Arthur’s Farm
I’m very much an advocate of the theory that you definitely can have too much of a good thing. I’m irrationally annoyed by overly prolific artists, and seeing an album runtime of 40mins+, even coming from my favourite bands, never fails to raise an exasperated sigh. So, perhaps a project like this, where I listen to this much of one artist, is inherently flawed – familiarity breeds contempt. All of this is an extended caveat to say that I found Back Again in the D.H.S.S. to be the least enjoyable HMHB release so far, albeit it’s perfectly as enjoyable as the others.
You quickly learn what you’re in for with these early HMHB releases; even if part of the expectation is a bit of the unexpected and a general sense of befuddlement. Once again, they deliver the goods on a series of forcefully memorable tunes; those hooks just grind their way into your head with their nursery rhyme-style sing-song simplicity.
This is more stylistically consistent than previous releases, with jangly Indie-Pop providing the dominant foundation. But there’s still nods to genre experimentation; the hints of spacey New Wave on Dickie Davies Eyes being the latest trick they add to their arsenal. And there’s still that ramshackle charm to the production. These are really solid, accomplished musicians who manage to convey an almost amateurish-ness in their recording; as if it would be too embarrassing to admit how well they’d learned to play their instruments.
Then there’s their usual surrealistic, sarcasm-laced stream of crap pop culture references. While certain turns of phrase still bring the humour, the novelty factor has worn off with the endless obscure references; I can’t bring myself to care about who Dean Friedman is. At their best, the references feel like the means to an end, where there’s insight beneath the quirk. But, at this stage, it feels like the references themselves are becoming the end point; it’s dangerously close to wacky, and no one wants to be wacky.
There’s a fine line between what is great about HMHB, and what is a turn-off. The combination of two moments on this album tipped them onto the wrong side of that line. Reasons to Be Miserable (Part 10) is a collection of mundane gripes at the world, underpinned by the self-effacing irony of him listing off these complaints while wasting away his life in bed. On its own, it works.
Then on I Was a Teenage Armchair Honved Fan, as the song approaches its climactic second half, Blackwell sings “Is this the bit where we’re supposed to make guitars collide” and reels off further clichés, like an actor winking to the camera and breaking the fourth wall. Again, on its own, it works. It captures some of the essential essence of HMHB; the subversion of tropes and skewering the self-importance of music industry and celebrity culture.
But in tandem, this sense of endless cynicism is tiring. It’s easy to be snarky, but at some point you need to care about something yourself. Otherwise, it slips into tedious contrarianism. And a band peddling diminishing variations on their best work is exactly the kind of trope that HMHB exist to subvert. The tunes are still pretty undeniable, but I’m crying out for some sincerity.
Rating:
Half Man Half Biscuit briefly split around this time. The next edition covers their 1991 comeback album, McIntyre, Treadmore and Davitt. Which also marks the releases entering my lifetime; maybe I’ll start to understand what they’re talking about…Read it here
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