Description
Label Review.
1988 album.
Our Overview.
The Mancunian alt-rave rockers and legends of the late 80s indie music scene, the Happy Mondays are re- releasing ‘Bummed’. Like many an influential album in rock history, the cultural significance of Happy Monday’s ‘Bummed’ the bands’ second album, was apparent to precious few listeners upon its first release on 5 November 1988. Within a decade or two, ‘Bummed’ would be hailed as one of the best records of the 80s, often by the self-same publications that had slated it back in the day - a harbinger of the seismic shift about to take place in British popular music, away from the squeaky-clean, corporately ordained pop-radio fodder which had increasingly dominated the charts since punk and back towards the more aggressive, unruly and experience-hungry urges which had always pulsed through rock & roll. This album is on vinyl for the first time since its original release. Features the singles ‘Wrote For Luck’ and ‘Lazyitis - One Armed Boxer'.
This is nasty, nightmarish music delivered with a lascivious leer by Shaun Ryder, a hallucinatory accidental poet portrayed on the album's garish cover as some kind of harlot put out to pasture. Decadence has rarely sounded as dangerous as it did in the hands of the Mondays and this is where they reveled in that debauchery, pumping out stiff psychedelic funk as Ryder spat out rhymes of luck, lazyitis and fat lady wrestlers. Hannett’s bright, brittle production amplifies everything, creating a swirling hyper-reality that's almost a sonic black hole sucking everything into its vortex -- slide guitars, sound clips from "Performance," maniacally looped drum machines, Beatles melodies, drums that are pushed to the front of the mix so it all is a relentless assault, from the ears down to the loins. As jagged and lacerating as all this is, there's a sense of evil glee, that the Mondays want to drag you down to their level, but there's no sense of seduction here; you're either with them or not, as ‘Bummed’ is music for after you've already succumbed to the dark side.
Tracklisting: Country Song / Moving In With / Mad Cyril / Fat Lady Wrestlers / Performance / Brain Dead / Wrote For Luck / Bring A Friend / Do It Bett