Don’t even begin to f**cking mention ‘You’re Gorgeous’, screams the joyfully impoverished lo-fi of Death of the Neighbourhood’s unruly buzzing title-track. Even the cheeky, free form scatting of lead-up up single, ‘Cokeholes’ offers a typically arsy thumb in your eye to all that mid-nineties crooning. Not that there was anything wrong with it, of course. In fact I don’t know why Mr Jones ever took so much offence to it. Me and the wife even had the swelling orchestral intro of ‘If You’ll Be Mine’ pumping out of the church tannoy as we got wed. Yes, we got the irony and the stinging anti-romance. Yes, we knew what it was all about. And yes the greater part of our guest list mistook it for Ian McCulloch. But then, we also got the irony and the stinging anti-romance of the first two singles, as I think most adult Northerners did. But you see, as much I love the man and allow myself to be overawed by his not inconsiderable scruffy craftsmanship and his skill in cutting 24-carat diamonds from a couple of samplers, a ball of string, a can of shaving foam and a Tascam 4-track, I still don’t understand why he can’t be Babybird (the title track is even lifted from a couple of Babybird b-sides if memory serves me correct).
Of course, fans of Stephen Jones will know only too well that ‘Death of the Neighbourhood’ revisits the scratchy, thrift store magic of pre-fame releases like ‘Happiest Man Alive’ and ‘Fatherhood’ – the stunning self-releases that best illustrate his bonkers urban theatre – but as faithfully as Jones retraces his steps and recreates the bitter-sweet dynamics of his Sheffield bedroom – the only thing that comes close to matching the surreal charm of ‘classic bird’ like ‘Bad Shave’ and ‘Sha Na Na’ are tracks like ‘Bruised Brain’, ‘Forgot To Take My Drugs’ and ‘God’s Not Coming’.
At almost two-hours in length it is a fairly exhausting reunion. Disc one is all the loopy hip-hop stuff, Disc 2 – is the languid soundscapes and instrumentals.
If you dug the delightful Casio-Heaven of the 600 or so demo songs he released in the early nineties, this latest offering should just about do you.
‘Death of the Neighbourhood’. It’s the name of the album and the group and it’s released on the uber-cool Atic label.