The debut album is a gift ravaged graciously by many – creative buds given the berth to burst wide open for the first time, foundations laid, curtains raised, debts paid, a world of possibilities either realised or borne afresh, all tumbling freely amongst the entwined ambitions of the tracklisting. Or not. Alas The Others, apparently allergic to the medium’s potential, manage to make their debut album already seem a step too far.
They were, up until fairly recently, little more than an idea. And a fairly good one at that. An obnoxious bunch of nerdowells treating punk rock with only as much respect as it deserves, repelling the real world’s bourgeois advances and building a shabby but select vagabond kingdom from a collective of common-thinkers. Their guerilla gigs might have technically only made them as punk rock as Embrace, but then there was a marked difference between hiring a stately home and commandeering a tube carriage with battery powered amps, a loudhailer and a snotty disregard for London’s stuffy commuters. They were acting on youth’s impulses, perhaps on all our behalves, it felt unscripted (more so than it probably was) and it felt exciting.
But with an album comes a whole host of other expectations. There’s the need to turn ideas and potential into something more concrete, to justify your existence because of the real possibility that people will see right through you otherwise, and to create something that transcends its natural habitat to exist on its own. The Others fail to chalk up a single score.
It’s a case of follow the leader rather than paying homage or finding their own centre of gravity. And there’s no immediate problem, per se, with taking your lead from the Pistols or Sham 69, but then you can’t photocopy and cut out context, and Dominic’s spat John Lydon-isms lack any of the packed punch they so obviously presume for themselves. How can you cause that kind of damage with hot air anyway? A whole album of chances and they find nothing to say. ‘William’ is a song, for instance, about a friend, called William. And nothing else. ‘Psychovision’ plays the tatty-upbringing martyr card without a hint of poetry or perspective, same with ‘Johan’ and ‘Almanac’. Hardly a rack of socio-cultural Molotov-cocktails either way. And repetitive to boot.
There are semi-frequent mentions of London street names in some kind of desperate attempt to create the notion of belonging and affinity with a city whose history and stereotype stands for everything they aspire to be, for whatever reason. But as with the majority of the album it’s kind of hard to work out an exact justification, what exactly it is they’re shouting about. Even songs that once seemed promising signs of a band on the cusp of a downtrodden zeitgeist (‘This Is For The Poor’, ‘Stan Bowles’, ‘How I Nearly Lost You’) are dragged down by their own company.
On reflection, it’s very simple. A record contract was the last thing these boys needed.