Authentic Celtic Band

It’s December tomorrow and, unavoidably, the start of advent. Half Man Half Biscuit have a line for most occasions and today’s is from 2009’s Shit Arm, Bad Tattoo’ (the owner of the limb in question is pictured above, either Pete Doherty or Carl Barat, or both). Nigel Blackwell takes them to task for many things, not least this-

‘Advent on the high street
I point and sing
Busk when it’s Christmas
You only busk when it’s Christmas’

Shit Arm, Bad Tattoo

Achtung Bono, the album this song is from, is peak HMHB. Every song, all fourteen of them, is a laugh out loud funny, damning indictment of modern life. In Shit Arm, Bad Tattoo Nigel Blackwell deals with The Libertines-

‘I could have put my head in a bucket full of porridge
And moaned about the hospital parking scheme
I would have saved fourteen pounds
That I just splashed out on your second album
For that’s what it’s akin to
And furthermore
You’ve got a shit arm, and that’s a bad tattoo’

The word ‘furthermore’ isn’t used enough in popular music.

Then he takes to task people who put the letter S onto the end of the Book Of Revelation (and those who do the same to Mary Hopkin). Unfortunately Pete and Carl do this in What A Waster-

‘When she wakes up in the morning

She writes down all her dreams

Reads like the Book of Revelations

Or the Beano or the unabridged Ulysses.’

Just before the guitar solo he sings ‘authentic Celtic band’. I’ve always assumed this is also a tattoo reference but it could be a musical group I suppose.

No Christmas songs here, not yet anyway.

You’re A Better Man Than I

This is the new single by The Libertines. Woah, come back, it’s much better than it has any right to be…

Cutting the pace to a half speed reggae time- woah, that’s twice, now come back and sit down- the trebly guitars are all present and correct, Pete and Carl take verses each and it sounds alive.

The Libertines reformation didn’t look too promising admittedly but Pete and Carl surely know that they’re only half as good (at best) individually and apart than when together. Debut album Up The Bracket is a blast, a proper good modern British indie rock album, and they are few and far between. The follow up was weak, we all know that. In between Bernard Butler got this out of them, the best thing they ever did, an absolute peach of a single…

It Started Fast But It Ends So Slow

If you can ignore the soap opera, the tabloids, drugs, the band of a generation, burglaries, supermodels, prison, arrests, blood and syringes, break-ups, re-unions, solo bands and side projects, ‘the fifteen quid I just shelled out for your second album’ (quote Nigel Blackwell), and all the other detritus and debris that surrounds The Libertines, you’ll notice that Don’t Look Back Into The Sun (B-side to I Get Along in 2003) is a magnificent song.

02 Don’t Look Back into the Sun.wma