Sounds From The Junkshop #21 - The Boo Radleys

 

"I don't really need, or want, to be some kind of star. I could get by on being alive but having no life..." - The Boo Radleys, Ride The Tiger, 1996

We've seen a few bands in Sounds From The Junkshop who ended up cursed with being remembered as a one-hit wonder with a hit that sounded very little like the rest of their output but Wirral natives the Boo Radleys must surely be up their in a league of their own on this front. However, that hit ended up being the wedge that got me into them and checking out their back catalogue and realising that beyond the none-more-Britpop of the song I knew them best for was a whole weird and wonderful world of great music.

Anyway, the same as a lot of people I guess, it was Wake Up Boo! that got me into the band - in the early months of 1995 you really couldn't escape it, it was all over the radio and had set the group up, somewhat awkwardly, as leading lights of Britpop. I say awkwardly because prior to that they'd been a mid-table shoegazing/psychedelic band who'd had plenty of press plaudits but very little in terms of actual success.

I bought the follow-up Find The Answer Within as well which should have really followed its predecessor into the Top 10 as it had a similar bright singalong tune masking some darker lyrics (about the disillusion with fame this time) - the problem was that everyone was still playing Wake Up Boo! and most people weren't even aware that there was a new Boo Radleys single out meaning it only just scraped the Top 40. It was enough to prompt me to buy the band's Wake Up! album though and even though it's comfortably their poppiest effort, there's still plenty of weirdness bubbling away in the background on the likes of the epic Joel, and the sinister 4am Conversation. Even the more straightforward likes of Stuck On Amber, Twinside, Martin, Doom! It's 7 O'Clock! and the yearning Reaching Out From Here were masking some pretty dark lyrics about internal struggles and dysfunctional relationships. Given that I always seem to end up drawn towards people who've mastered the art of writing deceptively sunny bouncy pop songs masking dark lyrics, it's probably not a surprise that it was on my stereo a lot over the next few months.

So anyway, a month or two after the fact, I was sat in the classroom at school one rainy lunchtime listening to Wake Up! on my walkman and a guy I was friends with who was a shoegazing fan wandered in and asked what I was listening to. I told him the Boo Radleys.

"Oh, Wake Up Boo! I'm guessing..." he sighed in the manner of someone who'd been a fan of the band before the hit (which, indeed is what he was).

"Well, the album, yeah." I replied, "It's good."

"Yeah, it is." he said, "But it's the one before it you want to be listening to. Giz a quid and I'll tape you a copy."

Which is how I ended up discovering what it turns out was the Boo Radleys' best album Giant Steps. It's a bit weird how people never seem to mention this album when looking back at the '90s as it received near universal praise at the time and even topped the NME Album of the Year chart. Maybe the whole "having a pop hit" thing counted against them subsequently but if so it's a pretty petty reason for discounting it. Basically, it was the album that transformed the Radleys from a mid-table shoegazing band into one of the most exciting and innovative bands in Britain pre-Britpop. Certainly the sound of opener I Hang Suspended is the sound of the shoegazing cobwebs well and truly being blasted away and the quality never lets up throughout.

I think what makes Giant Steps stand out is what an amazingly varied album it is - Upon 9th & Fairchild is a doomy almost dub-style ode to squat living which is then followed by the pure pop of Wish I Was Skinny and the concrete heavy riff meets gentle verse of Leaves And Sand. The highlights just keep coming from there through the five pints lament of Thinking Of Ways to the riffed-up Take The Time Around and the seasick Spun Around to the classic Lazarus, the song that should've broken them if there'd been any justice.

Anyway, back forward to 1995 - the Boos would manage a second Top 20 hit with the blissed out From The Bench At Belvidere (a non-album single) before retiring back to the studio to write the follow-up to Wake Up! with Martin Carr, the group's guitarist and chief songwriter, claiming it would be a reaction against their sudden pop star status. Frontman Sice in the meantime would release an under-rated album under the self-explanatory alias of Eggman called First Fruits (give That's That Then (For Now) and Not Bad Enough a listen, they'd definitely have held their own on a Boos album.

Anyway, Carr very much wasn't kidding - when What's In The Box?, the lead-off single for the group's new album C'mon Kids, surfaced, it was a million miles away from anything that had been on Wake Up! with squalling guitars, sneered vocals and panic attack lyrics about Carr's Catholic upbringing (a recurring theme on the album). The album wasn't taking any prisoners either - "Commercial Boo-icide!" screamed the review in Select but it was the sort of thing that after your first listen you'd find yourself saying "ooh, I'm not sure about this..." but you'd end up coming back listen after listen and slowly realise "actually, this is a bit good isn't it?"

It's certainly a weird and wild ride from the almost rap-style Melodies For The Deaf through the bitter break-up ode Everything Is Sorrow and the "five songs in one" tour de force of Bullfrog Green to the almost tender look back at childhood years New Brighton Promenade. My personal favourite was the gentle epic Ride The Tiger with its Mick Ronson style guitar line and lyrics about being true to yourself and not falling for the trappings of stardom. It did eventually get released as the third single from the album but only just scraped the Top 40 while the album itself peaked at number 20, 19 places lower than Wake Up! The writing was arguably on the wall.

The group would go on hiatus for the remainder of 1997 and not return until the dying days of 1998 with what turned out to be their final album Kingsize. Hand on heart, I was put off this one by the lead-off single Free Huey which seemed to be floundering around in search of a tune. By this point the game was pretty much up for the Boos I think - their label Creation was on the verge of closing its doors after Alan McGee had got tired of what the label had become and the combination of being a cool group who'd sold out with a pop hit and then alienated the Britpop fans who'd come on board with a wilfully difficult album had eroded their fanbase pretty drastically meaning it came out to minimal fanfare.

I did eventually pick Kingsize up in a sale later in 1999 after the band broke up (they went their separate ways at the start of that year) and to be honest, while its not of the same standard as its three predecessors, it's still got plenty of highlights such as the cinematic The Old News Stand At Hamilton Square, the sinister Monuments For A Dead Century and the panic-stricken Blue Room In Archway even if there's a few times when it loses focus a bit. Following the split, Carr would go solo under the Brave Captain moniker while the others would drift out of the music business.

I never saw the Boo Radleys live - in fact, I'm not sure I even remember them playing Leeds in the era I lived there - as they had a reputation of being a band who were better in the studio than in the live arena which is probably understandable given the amount of studio trickery they used to such good effect on their albums. Doesn't make them any worse a band in my opinion though. There were reports circling last year that the Boo Radleys were getting back together to record some new music to celebrate the band's 30th anniversary but I've not heard anything since so I'm assuming that Covid put those plans on ice (hopefully not derailed altogether). Anyway, hopefully something will eventually surface and we can see if the old magic is still intact. If it's even half as good as Giant Steps and Wake Up! were then it should hopefully be well worth waiting for.