440px-AuteursNowImaCowboyWhere I dig into something I’ve not heard before, from the reviews section of old Mojo Magazines, on an irregular basis.

The Auteurs
Now I’m A Cowboy
1994 – Hut Records

Britpop was the first music that was mine. Grunge I had known loved a lot of, but it was my older brother’s thing. Britpop, and that blast of energy and melody, was mine and no one elses, and an era of music I still find fascinating. However, what I call Britpop was a few years too late. There was a scene before Blur hit it big, where bands like Suede were making fascinating inroads into the charts. Amongst them was The Auteurs.

I’ve been pretty aware of Luke Haines for a long time. His name just keeps popping up, especially in English magazines. Baader Meinhof, Black Box Recorder and The Auteurs were all band names I’ve heard of, but never heard.

This is Haines’ breakthrough, and biggest record, it seems. It features one big hit – ‘Lenny Valentino‘. It’s a hit that has somehow never appeared in any of the Britpop compilations I’ve collected over the years. I had never heard it until I bought this album. Lenny Valentino sounds like a hit single…a hook every 7 seconds indeed. In the clip, they definitey look more glam, before Britpop essentially moved north and into Oasis.

And oh, is it Britpop. There’s those jangly guitars mixed with loud guitars. There’s lots of lovely melodies and kitchen sink concerns. But there’s also a bit of Paul Westerberg here. There’s a graspy-ness to the vocal and a tenderness in the guitars. It makes sense that this did quite well (kinda) on radio in the UK and they toured the states.

Some really quite great songs. ‘New French Girlfriend‘ and ‘Chinese Bakery‘ are pretty great (as in pretty and great). That cello they have throughout adds a different colour, and used wonderfully on ‘A Sister Like You‘. Some of it has dated, and it doesn’t cover the stunning breadth of vision that, say, Parklife or Different Class would end up doing. There’s more than a couple of Britpop by numbers here.

What happened to The Auteurs was that Haines broke both his ankles in a drunken accident. It took them off the road and Haines came back with a downbeat record. There seems to be plenty of Haines devotees, people who follow his every band. I’m not sure I’m there yet. But dammit, that ‘Chinese Bakery‘ song is just so good. It’s definitely staying on the iPod. It’s actually getting better with every listen.

The review on Mojo #006 was broadly positive. They alsoe interviewed the band in the issue, about a recent tour with The Fall. This record was some success, to the point where it was actually reissued earlier in the year as a 2CD set.

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