Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Members
Stats
  • Total Posts: 5,559,186
  • Total Topics: 106,349
  • Online Today: 780
  • Online Ever: 3,311
  • (July 08, 2021, 03:14:41 AM)
Users Online
Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 29, 2024, 06:19:05 AM

Login with username, password and session length

Mansun appreciation thread

Started by Kankurette, March 31, 2021, 11:08:59 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

purlieu

Nah, they were named after Charles Manson, and then invented the Verve story because they realised naming yourself after Charles Manson is stupid.

El Unicornio, mang

Quote from: purlieu on April 03, 2021, 12:34:26 PM
Nah, they were named after Charles Manson, and then invented the Verve story because they realised naming yourself after Charles Manson is stupid.

Oh, I've been believing a lie all these years!

Although wiki says

Quotethey were forced to change the spelling due to threatened legal action from the Charles Manson Estate

That's a case I'm pretty sure the band would have won. (and Marilyn Manson did it anyway)

Kankurette

I always thought it was a Charles Manson reference. Quite a few musicians were fascinated by him and/or wrote songs about him.

Icehaven

Yep I thought I remembered reading an interview where they said they were originally called Manson but got fed up of the questions/associations with Charles Manson etc. so they changed it to Mansun. That doesn't make a lot of sense though as of course that would happen if you called your band Manson so maybe I've misremembered.

Chicory

It still didn't stop the unimaginative mocking at school. "Haha, you like Hanson!!"

Quote from: Kankurette on April 02, 2021, 11:16:04 PM
Enjoy!

I did. I've listened to them both twice now.


Attack Of The Grey Lantern - First few songs don't really 'hold' me, but from Wide Open Space onwards, I am 'glued'. I really like how Dark Mavis (the final track) links back to Stripper Vicar lyrically, and then musically, right at the end, mirrors how the album starts; it gives the album that circular feel, that sense of 'balance'. What I like even more (and I don't think I've seen this before) is that they then 'fuck up' that balance by adding a hidden track, which not only undermines (playfully) the lyrical content, but becomes 'unbalanced' itself; the singer 'losing' the rhythm, and the song ending wonkily (with piano that reminds me of Aladdin Sane). Only people who know how to make good art can fuck with it like that.

Six - I'm not even going to try to describe this one, but I had a similar experience to when I first listened to Fetch The Bolt Cutters (Fiona Apple), where the word 'masterpiece' kept popping into my head. I guess I should call it a masterpiece then.


(I wouldn't bother with that link I posted - the sound isn't very 'sharp')

Kankurette

Yeah, Fetch the Bolt Cutters was a grower. At first, I wasn't sure what to make of it but a few listens later and I fell in love with it, especially Shameika (even more so when I heard about the back story behind the song) and Under the Table. I love how percussive it is and how she just bunged all kinds of sounds in, like her dogs barking.

I've got Legacy on. It's a banger. I'd forgotten about Electric Man as well, my old boss in Oxfam had a mixtape and that was one of the songs on it. Hearing all these songs again is like meeting up with an old friend.

ETA: that bit about the hidden track, you mean when Paul starts singing about the lyrics getting weirder? I really liked that. Beats people throwing up any day (yes, Ash, I mean you).

DrGreggles

Listened to Attack Of The Grey Lantern and Six earlier for the first time in years (thanks to this egg-shaped thread) and, unlike a lot of their supposed contemporaries, both have aged really well.

non capisco

Listening to 'Six' for the first time off the back of this thread and really loving it, dense with hooks and ideas and way more accessible and immediate than I was expecting given its reputation as some kind of confounding puzzle. I'm getting a Patton vibe off some of Draper's vocals on this, the chorus of 'Negative' especially sounds like 'The Real Thing' era FNM.

Chicory

I remember Draper naming 'Album Of The Year' as one of his um, albums of the year in the NME way back in the very late 20th century, so a Faith No More influence isn't that surprising.  Incidentally, I got into FNM because I saw the 'Epic' video on MTV2 and thought the chorus sounded quite Mansunny.

purlieu

The hidden track is called 'Open Letter to the Lyrical Trainspotter', and yes, it's wonderful daft fun. It also appeared as a b-side to... something from that album, which I felt lessened its impact a little.

I really got into them a couple of years ago and about three days before Paul Draper was accused of being a bit of a pest by Estrons.

Catherine Anne Davies/The Anchoress who did the Spooky Action album with him seems to have cut all ties too.

purlieu

Quote from: Wayman C. McCreery on April 05, 2021, 07:55:52 AM
Catherine Anne Davies/The Anchoress who did the Spooky Action album with him seems to have cut all ties too.
To be fair, he did co-write the lead single from her new album.

Quote from: Kankurette on April 04, 2021, 09:52:05 PM
I love how percussive it is and how she just bunged all kinds of sounds in, like her dogs barking.

Yes! And the bit where she knocks something on the floor at the end of one of the songs.


Quote from: Kankurette on April 04, 2021, 09:52:05 PM
ETA: that bit about the hidden track, you mean when Paul starts singing about the lyrics getting weirder?

Yeah that's the part I meant.


---


Thanks a lot, Wayman C. McCreery. I've just got into them and now I have to RE-ASSESS EVERYTHING. I suppose I'll have to throw away these files I illegally downloaded. Great. Fucking waste of megabites.

Chicory

I also gave 'Six' a reappraisal last night.  It still surprises the tits off me.  I love the way so many of the songs abruptly change into the next one, like someone having enough of a channel and switching over to another one.

Quote from: purlieu on April 05, 2021, 10:03:00 AM
To be fair, he did co-write the lead single from her new album.

Oh I didn't know that. Though it could've been written a couple of years ago. I don't want to scour her timeline but she's definitely tweeted a lot about a particularly toxic former collaborator who I've always assumed is PD.

He seems like a massive arsehole.

The Culture Bunker

I did go back and listen to 'Attack of the Grey Lantern' yesterday, for what was probably the first time in ten years - not because I dislike it, but more than when I wanted a Mansun hit, I always picked up 'Six'. Made me flashback to hearing it when I was 16 and thinking "well, this is different..."

Should probably thank Q magazine - my first exposure to Mansun was when 'The Chad Who Love Me' featured on a compilation of the best new bands of 1997.

Kankurette

Draper is a clever bloke. Very talented. It's a shame he's such a knob.

badaids

Back in the day, among all my snobby wanker indie mates, Mansun were considered a joke. We didn't hate them, but we were unanimous that they were a contrived, pretentious bunch of tossers who would have turned into showaddywaddy in a heartbeat if ted revivalism had become a thing.

Today, I like a lot of their stuff but I can understand better why we all hated them at the time.

First of all they looked like shit. First up draper looked like Ian Beale. Very hard to get over. Then there was the way they dressed, like a cheapo version of the police. They never coordinated between each other, and it looked like they got their clothes from River Island. Even in the videos, which are nearly all terrible, they look horrible. Frosted tips, shit goatees, clumpy shoes and lumpy trousers. Then there was the guitars. Objectionable cross bones, the halved les Paul and the flowery bass. The video for Take it easy chicken, is a case in point. They look astonishingly bad.

Then there's the over ambitious ness and overwrought ness of a lot of their music. I can get behind that today, but I still think their ambition outstrips their ability. Then they'd do stupid things like the jaunty piano bitt at the end of wide open space. Both videos for that song are an embarrassing mess too in which they look awful.

Thanks to this thread for giving me the idea to have a re listen.

Quote from: badaids on April 05, 2021, 12:52:02 PM
Then there's the over ambitious ness and overwrought ness of a lot of their music. I can get behind that today, but I still think their ambition outstrips their ability. Then they'd do stupid things like the jaunty piano bitt at the end of wide open space. Both videos for that song are an embarrassing mess too in which they look awful.

I don't know why they left that in for the single. It's really the segue into Stripper Vicar. They should have faded it out instead

Icehaven

Quote from: badaids on April 05, 2021, 12:52:02 PM
First up draper looked like Ian Beale. Very hard to get over.

I suppose you're entitled to your other (wrong) opinions but this is objectively nonsense. He looked more like Pat Butcher (and that's not intended as an insult.)

badaids

Quote from: icehaven on April 05, 2021, 05:04:21 PM
I suppose you're entitled to your other (wrong) opinions but this is objectively nonsense. He looked more like Pat Butcher (and that's not intended as an insult.)


Quote from: Kankurette on April 05, 2021, 12:04:25 PM
Draper is a clever bloke. Very talented. It's a shame he's such a knob.

I reckon he has very atypical character traits that make Mansun's music like it is, as well as making him such a knob. But what do you do? Do you cut deeply atypical people out of culture, because their foibles make them impossible to be around?

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: non capisco on April 04, 2021, 10:27:50 PM
I'm getting a Patton vibe off some of Draper's vocals on this, the chorus of 'Negative' especially sounds like 'The Real Thing' era FNM.
I've long thought there was a similarity. I'm glad it wasn't just me being tin-eared.


Kankurette

He's a Christian? So fucking what?

purlieu

It's hard to know exactly what the fuck is going on with this. I'm not looking forward to seeing where it all leads because, regardless of everything else, Six is an album I turn to when I'm at my lowest, and I don't want to lose one of those to the guy behind it being a cunt.

daf

I've fucked it up,
shot my load
Spewed onto the motorway shoulder
I could have been somebody special

Kankurette

Quote from: purlieu on May 15, 2021, 10:22:19 PM
It's hard to know exactly what the fuck is going on with this. I'm not looking forward to seeing where it all leads because, regardless of everything else, Six is an album I turn to when I'm at my lowest, and I don't want to lose one of those to the guy behind it being a cunt.
Don't let Draper ruin them for you.

Icehaven