Album of the Week: 'Early'

One of the most off-putting aspects of serious engagement with popular music is the myth of the Holy Album. From the people who neglect the shuffle function on mp3 players, to stoners reverently listening to vinyl, worshippers at the shrine of the Holy Album put the commodity before its content, and neglect the fact that, in the bad old days, bands would churn out any old shit to fulfill a contract. Alan Partridge was right to say that his favourite Beatles album was 'The Best of the Beatles'. Aside from being sometimes far better than the albums from which they are compiled, some compilations enable listeners to hear music that was otherwise inaccessible to everyone except a core of devotees.


Green Gartside, the only constant of the 'band' Scritti Politti, is one of the oddest musicians working. Aside from being a 50-something who does a mean rap cover version live, his musical career has bewildering shifts, usually related to what seem to be mental breakdowns. In the 80s, he made disgustingly lush, lyrically obtuse pop, while looking like a shell-suited Princess Diana. After a decade's silence, he returned with the same, but with rap added. Another decade passed, and he made an album of singer-songwritery wonder, which was correctly nominated for the Mercury prize, called White Bread, Black Beer (a testament to his apparent alcoholism). But, before this, Scritti Politti were actually a band, and made some of the most broken, disturbing punk of its time. Due to either a breakdown, or a speed-induced heart attack, they folded before recording what Mojo would call an album. Luckily, in 2005, Rough Trade collected these lost songs, and made an album of them.

'Early' starts in with a jolt, with the terrifying 'Skank Bloc Bologna'. Terrifying sounds like hyperbole, but it isn't - the music is absolutely fucked, and the lyrics are all limited horizons, ruined potential and, most of all, unknowing. Slipknot would have to have ten guitarists, six drummers and five DJs, masturbating, to induce this bewilderment and dislocation in their audience. The general mood of the album is fearful. In fact, punk can be seen as a fear reaction to the social crisis of Britain in the 70s - with Sex Pistols being the fight, and Scritti Politti being the flight. Of course, the Sex Pistols are more fun, but Scritti are more interesting.

This is an album that can only be understood in its historical context. It's funky, tuneful and all that, but lyrics, like those that appear in the brilliant 'Bibbly-O-Tek' - "secondary picket, Eastern Bloc" - are wonderfully, laughably of their time. In general, the album has more to chew on than most others. Voices overlap, speaking different words, songs stutter, restart, change course. Even when their pop future can be glimpsed, there are little phrases, musical and lyrical, that raise a smile. 'The "Sweetest Girl"', the most punkless song here, has Robert Wyatt playing dissonant keyboards, and the best rationalisation for a break-up ever - the Girl left "because she understood the value of defiance". Like the music M.I.A. now makes, these songs are funny, political, funky and beautiful. And to think that they all could have been left on authentic, decaying vinyl EPs, never seeing the light as a joyous, inauthentic CD album.