“His best album since A Grand Don’t Come For Free? Absolutely, but that’d be faint praise”
The Streets: Computers And Blues (679/Locked On)
Written for and published in the Sunday Herald, 6 February 2011.
You’ve got to feel a little sorry for Mike Skinner. Not because of the downbeat tales of everyman woe that make up his best work as The Streets, but simply because it’s been downhill all the way since 2004 and that happy summer when his second album went to number one. A concept album by a British rapper, about losing a thousand quid down the back of a telly? You’re ‘avin a giraffe, as Skinner might have put it were he not too busy marvelling at his sudden — and deserved — success.
A Grand Don’t Come For Free was a joyous record, turning Skinner into a Cockney-accented spokesman for underachieving twentysomething blokes everywhere (which was surprising, considering he comes from the West Midlands). Seven years and two desperately disappointing follow-ups later, he’s resurfaced with a fifth record, Computers And Blues, and the announcement that he’s jacking it in: no more Streets.
Perhaps it’s a shrewd move. His career under that moniker pretty much spans a decade; pretty much spans his twenties. A lot changes when you hit 30. (We might even hope something will change now we’re out of the celebrity-obsessed vacuum of the 2000s.) It’s a good time to move on. But what’s he left us with?
It begins with piercing electronic noise giving way to the cloudy textures, needling riff and menacing bass of Outside Inside: musically one of the most interesting things he’s done, but lyrically yet another of his meditations on getting mashed with your mates and thinking there must be more to life. Thing is, Mike, we know you know there is. So why keep going on about it?
Skinner’s most effective work has always been melodically simple: but, given melodic simplicity is something of a trademark, so has his worst. While he’s occasionally hit on something as perfect as Dry Your Eyes (seriously, go back and listen to it — it’s a 24-carat modern gem), in the main people engage with his songs because of what he’s saying; those savvy little vignettes that sometimes put him closer to thoughtful stand-up than musician. Yet for every classic there’s one that’s forgettable or irritating or both: here, for example, there’s Roof Of Your Car, a song about nothing set to musical nothingness.
But there’s much, much more that stands out. There’s the clever conceit of Puzzled By People; the touching yet slightly chilling Blip On A Screen, addressed to his unborn child (“only a hundred pixels on a scan”); the melancholic and unsettling Soldiers; the wonderful wordplay of ABC, OMG and Trying To Kill ME, which could almost — almost — be a song cycle in themselves.
His best album since A Grand Don’t Come For Free? Absolutely, but that’d be faint praise. This is a fine swan-song but it also suggests a new direction for Skinner’s sometimes erratic talent: something a little more, well, grown-up. The Streets is finished, and it’s probably not a moment too soon. What Mike Skinner does next will be well worth watching.
