Mansun

[mayer]

i read something on teletext about their fourth album being released at last, as part of a 3CD boxset.... with B-Sides and other stuff on the other discs... dunno how much truth their is to that.

i wouldn't mind a one-off reunion gig and all (as long as they play only "....Disappoint U" off Little Kix)

edit: found some info on drowned in sound....

We can confirm Mansun's fourth album WILL be released by Parlophone later this year. Paul Draper has announced that, as well as working on solo material, he's been patching together "loose ends since the split of the band". Titled 'Kleptomania', it will be a three-CD package of the fourth album sessions, the best of the non-album tracks from the EPs, and a third CD of rare and unreleased material hunted down at Abbey Road.

Draper, ex-vocalist with the Chester foursome, posted on mansun.net to say: "I will also be writing detailed sleeve notes for the release which should be out in the autumn of this year... New tracks appearing on 'Kleptomania' will include some of the songs that we played on the final tour in 2002, like 'Slipping Away', 'Keep Telling Myself' and 'Getting Your Way'. A full detailed running order of the whole album will be announced soon and as I get further down the road of putting this record together, I'll put up regular posts informing you of how it's progressing."

He said he's also busy "with a few writing and production collaborations at the moment. I'll be launching an official website of my own in the very near future..."

Check their website for the full statement.

But anyway - hurrah!

Official Mansun Website & Statement

[NaN]

3 cds seems a bit much

[morgs]

I liked them.  They took too long between albums 2 and 3 and it all seemed to go down the drain.  As I have said on here before, The first album remains a great album and I still enjoy the 2nd.  The 3rd did nothing much for me I am afraid.

Will be interested to see what the final collection sounds like.

[mayer]

3 cds seems a bit much

first CD is Kleptomania

second CD will be a round up of some (pretty damn good) non album tracks, like Take It Easy Chicken, Drastic Sturgeon, Closed For Business and whatnot,

bugger knows what'll be on the third disc mind.

[morgs]

I LOVED Take It Easy Chicken.... used to play it loudly in the car (particularly the guitar riff)  and shout "Chicken" at the right/wrong moment to annoy my (now ex) girlfriend!

[fanny splendid]

Well, it'll be worth a free download...

[mayer]

September 27 release date, according to official site, according to NME dot com.

[Lumiere]

I love Mansun, and I listened to their masterpiece 'Attack Of The Grey Lantern' today. I can't wait for this, should be rather interesting.

[BetaKarraTene]

I followed Mansun from pretty near the start and they're the band that really got me into music big time.  'Attack Of The Grey Lantern' is one of my all-time favourite albums.  When they announced their split, it was the only time I've felt a pang of sadness at such a thing.

I'm going to risk the significant wrath of Mansun fans and say that 'Little Kixx' is a seriously under-rated album.  Sure it's not as out-there as Six, but I much prefer Mansun when they were doing straight up pop songs like Electric Man and We Are The Boys.  It's a shame that the band themselves seem to have dis-owned the album.  Still I look forward hugely to Kleptomania.

Great b-sides band too, and if you head over to //www.mansun.net, you can vote for what's going to make it to the b-sides CD.

[Bogey]

It's very strange, at the time I remember finding their singer so unbelievably physically repulsive that I just couldn't watch or listen to them.
Having said that, I've a feeling I bought their first album. Strange days.

Why were they called Mansun by the way?

Actually, thinking about it, there must be tons of bands with weird names whose origin only a few of their fans know. I wonder how many U2 fans know where their name comes from f'rinstance?
There ought to be a thread about that.

[mayer]

Why were they called Mansun by the way?

after the Verve (later The Verve) song "A Man Called Sun".

[Lumiere]

Mansun were always a very odd band, and there was always that 'Mavis' mystery....

[David Qunt]

Mansun were always a very odd band, and there was always that 'Mavis' mystery....

I always understood that 'Dark Mavis' was a spoonerism for 'Mark Davis', which I understand was the name of one of the chaps in the band.

For me, the 'Mavis' thing was possibly lent more mystery by Mansun's apparent penchant for things related to cross-dressing, as found in lyrics to songs like Stripper Vicar.

Seems plausible enough to me, anyway.

[BetaKarraTene]

The whole of 'Grey Lantern' is supposedly a story about an odd village and its inhabitants.  Mavis is the vicars daughter and gets lots of mentions throughout the album as does said vicar who is the subject of 'Stripper Vicar' where he ends up being hung, and the final track is a eulogy for his funeral.

When it was released, 'Grey Lantern' was apparently the first (and only until a few weeks ago) concept album to reach number 1.

[NaN]

When it was released, 'Grey Lantern' was apparently the first (and only until a few weeks ago) concept album to reach number 1.

woah...  grey lantern is a concept album? shit!... all these years i've been living a lie.... bastards....

did six and (shudder) little kix have similar stories to tell?

[BetaKarraTene]

Personally, I wouldn't have called it a concept album beacuse I think only about 6 songs told the story about the village (Like Dark Mavis and Stripper Vicar), whilst the rest (like Wide Open Space, The Chad Who Loved Me) were songs which pretty much stood on their own.  Even then, the concept songs were only loosely linked to the overall story.  You might get only one or two mentions of stories in each song, and even then, songs like Disgusting work just as well on their own as on the album.
I'd class it along with Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots as a semi-concept album.

Although both Six and Little Kixx had running themes through them such as paranoia and breakdown, they're not concept albums.  If they were, you might as well class every album a concept album.

[alwayscrashing]

I heard originally their name was A Man called Son...after something else, then some record exec told them to shorten it...

[Brainwrong]

I agree with a previous post about 'Little Kix' being underated, but it just isn't on a par with the previous two offerings. I liked the idea of 'Mansuns only love song' actually being their only love song.. then 12 pop up on one album! heh. Anway, this may have been discussed before but does anyone know the reason why they split? Do they all have day jobs now?

[BetaKarraTene]

Right, there's a lot of conjecture about their name and subsequent change. What's for certain is that the band were named after the The Verve song 'A Man Called Sun'.

Now depending on what you read, a few things happened and it gets a bit murky.  The one that I read from the website at the time (and I think official story) is that they shortened the name to Manson for their first pressing of 'Take It Easy Chicken' but there was an error with the spelling which got inadvertantly changed to Mansun, but the band decided to stick with it anyway.  There's another story where they got threatened with legal action from Charles Manson because he was going to release a record of his own and so changed the 'o' to a 'u' to avoid confusion. (Although that didn't stop people thinking that I was a Marylin Manson fan when I said i liked Mansun - Every. Single. Time.)

As to why they split, the official line was that they felt the band had run it's course and wanted to do their own things.  They initially blocked the releae of Kleptomania because they didn't want to put it out for some reason. Chad had all ready recorded a solo album by the Kleptomania sessions which still hasn't seen the light of day, the drummer now runs a farm, the bassist is racing cars in the US and Draper is writing songs with Skin.

Yeesh!  I feel like I've just expunged all my years of fandom there.  All I can think of now is how much I hate Christine A Gorilla and why no-one bought the Junior Senior album.

[Ambient Sheep]

When it was released, 'Grey Lantern' was apparently the first (and only until a few weeks ago) concept album to reach number 1.

Shome mishtake shurely?  "Pink Floyd - The Wall"?  Or did that not get to number 1?  (One Google later: no, not in the UK.  Only number 3, amazingly enough.  Was number 1 in the States though.)

What was the recent exception - I'm soooo out of touch.

[NaN]

What was the recent exception - I'm soooo out of touch.

the bloody streets

[Ambient Sheep]

What was the recent exception - I'm soooo out of touch.

the bloody streets

That counts as a concept album?!  I must have missed something, and probably have.

[NaN]

from amazon.co.uk

A Grand Don't Come for Free tells the story of his recent troubles and triumphs in a manner that is as much music-hall as it is friends chatting on the phone. The story is simple but the narrative is far more cohesive than a string of songs explaining the plot. His broken television, a pivotal part of the story is referenced throughout, as are warning signs that his girlfriend, Simone, is seeing best mate Dan behind his back. It may sound like a soap opera but is given added depth by the attention to detail in lyrics ("she was with the white-shirted man in McDonalds car park" on "Such a Twat")

not high-concept.... but a concept none the less

[lactating man nips]

I was randomly thinking about starting a thread about Mansun earlier and then I saw "Mansun" in the recent thread thingy on the front page. I really liked the singles I heard upon the original release of grey lanterns and rediscovered the band recently and now I think they are quite possibly my favourite.
       Anyone have any recommendations that might appeal to a Mansun fan? I saw on amg that suede are listed as an influence and have got a copy of dog man star which I think is a cracking album. Being a person that doesn't follow music too closely I never bothered with suede assuming them to be another so-so by product of Britpop. I fucking hate the  streets.

[Brainwrong]

I was randomly thinking about starting a thread about Mansun earlier and then I saw "Mansun" in the recent thread thingy on the front page. I really liked the singles I heard upon the original release of grey lanterns and rediscovered the band recently and now I think they are quite possibly my favourite.
       Anyone have any recommendations that might appeal to a Mansun fan? I saw on amg that suede are listed as an influence and have got a copy of dog man star which I think is a cracking album. Being a person that doesn't follow music too closely I never bothered with suede assuming them to be another so-so by product of Britpop. I fucking hate the  streets.

Heh, The Streets are shite aren't they?
Suede were about before the so-called brit-pop era and you could do alot worse than getting hold of the self-titled debut and 'Sci-Fi Lullabys' (a collection of b-sides where some of the songs are actually better than the album tracks - 'Killing of a Flash-Boy' anyone?!) hmmm other good bands? Well I was/am a big Mansun fan.. I also like The Smiths, The Libertines, Radiohead, dEUS and err, Disco!!

PS - Wasn't 'OK Computer' a concept album of sorts?

[Lumiere]

Yes, very loosely.

SIX was apparently a concept album, although I'm buggered if I can figure out what it's about.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I got the Kleptomania Box set last week and it's ace.The second and third disks are great, particularly since I only really got into the band around 1999 thus making much of it new to me, and while you can hear the rough edges on a few of the fourth album songs, it just adds to the mystique of it all somehow. Although i feel like a bit of a brown nosing die hard fan saying this, it really is (or was) a "return to form"* after the vague disappointment of little kix and its quest to use the word love as much as humanly possible. Come to think of it, the fact that they weren't completely creatively burned out makes it seem all the more sad that they split up.

* in case anyone else has said that previously, please don't take this to be a piss take. It just seems that the phrase "return to form" is usually spouted by bitter self deluding wierdos who are convinced that band/artist X is going to make some kind of staggering comeback, dispite having ceased to be vital years ago or just being a bit shit to start with.
Lord knows I dont want to start any fights on only my second post.