For a band who were able to fill out clubs like the Koko and Scala without so much as breaking a sweat, and were still attracting the kindest of words from the UK’s critical masses, finding themselves without a label must have been like one of those occasions when fate seems squarely against you. Was it the unnecessary American drawl? The sneaky musical pilfering? The cheese as grating as a pound of gorgonzola? The incurable misanthropy of vocalist Stuart Adams? Or was it that when people joked about not giving up their day jobs, this ordinarily sceptical Cambridge four-piece actually took them at their word? Anyway, whatever the reason for their departure from the Track & Field Organisation, Cooking Vinyl were there to put this belligerent young humpty together again, plying him with even more bile, more bitterness and more booze and drugs.
‘Please Yourself’ kicks things off. Guitars as crisp and crunchy as a fresh pound of carrots, a bass as playful as a barracuda in a bag of worms, drums crashing like sheet-metal against a pile of collapsing boxes and a vocal that sounds as if it’s about to swallow a bottle of pills or score the words ‘seriously f*cked off’ into its forearm. ‘Go back to your hotel and please yourself’. It’s earthy, it’s urban and it’s a prickly two-finger salute to every absconding industry sort this side of Brian Epstein. Sure it courts the jerky garage pop of bands like The Vines and swings like a bagful of 60s Beatniks from time to time, but Adam’s sheer bloody-mindedness makes rifftastic tunes like ‘Salivating’ and ‘St Albans’ such an uncomplicated joy. There’s nowt so lovely as ‘It’s All Over’ but it’s not without tenderness, you just have to be careful of the thorns.
Taking its cues from skilful misanthropists and observers like Pavement and Brakes, ‘Please and Thank You’ just goes to prove that if it isn’t broken, you really don’t need to fix it.
‘PLEASE AND THANK YOU’ RELEASED APRIL 20TH 2009.