Sounds From The Junkshop #27 - Hurricane #1

 

"One day I'll fly away, head for the sun, one day I'm hoping maybe that I'll feel like someone..." - Hurricane #1 - Keep Walking, 1997

This, I suspect, is going to be quite a convoluted SFTJ so you might want to nip out and get yourself a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits. Don't worry, I'll still be here ready to go when you get back. All ready now? Good.

Okay, so before Hurricane #1 there was Ride who were one of the few shoegazing bands of the early '90s that I actually used to quite like. I almost certainly first discovered them while having one of those evenings suitably, erm, relaxed shall we say on "magic parsley" round at one of my shoegazer mates' houses in my mid-teens that I mentioned in the Lush SFTJ last month. Any road up, Ride were a four-piece from Oxford who were signed to Creation (back when it was known as the premier shoegazing label in the days before Oasis). Unlike a lot of bands of the genre though, they were actually pretty consistent at writing good tunes with the likes of Taste, Unfamiliar and especially the pop-tastic Twisterella all being regular fixtures on the stereo on those hazy weekend evenings many moons ago.

As with a lot of shoegazing bands though, by the time of the mid-'90s, it was looking a bit shaky for Ride. With a lot of the genre facing an "adapt or die" challenge after the movement went from in thing to laughing stock, Ride would attempt to swim with the tide and their third album, 1994's Carnival of Light, which would see them taking off on a similar route as the Stone Roses did for Second Coming by revealing a new-found love of '70s style classic rock (the fact that Creation had just signed Oasis who'd quickly gone on to be the biggest selling band on it probably hadn't escaped their attention either)

Carnival of Light had its moments and I remember really liking it at the time (suffice to say that among my shoegazing friends who regarded everything Britpop with suspicion I was in the minority) but it clearly wasn't the work of a harmonious band with the group's two guitarists and principal songwriters Mark Gardener and Andy Bell being at each others' throats to the extent that Gardener's songs were all on side one (which, to be honest, was the better side - 1000 Miles, From Time To Time and Only Now are probably the three strongest tracks on it) and Bell's were all on side two. It undersold as shoegazing fans simply turned their backs on it and it didn't gain them the requisite new fans to make the numbers up. A new album was started but Gardener quit midway through making it leaving Bell, bassist Steve Queralt and drummer Loz Colbert to struggle on as a trio. Soon after the release of Tarantula (similar to its predecessor, it had three or four good songs but a lot of filler - in fact there's a case to be made that if Ride had put out a single album with the best bits of each of Carnival of Light and Tarantula then it would have been pretty good) the group disbanded for good - the album and its one single Black Nite Crash missed the Top 40 by a mile.

After the split, Gardener and Colbert would go on to a new band the Animalhouse while Bell would remain signed to Creation and, having clearly had his head turned by Oasis, hooked up with bassist and fellow Oxford native Will Pepper formerly of Thee Hypnotics (rather good early '90s psychedelic garage rock band which was also Jim Jones, later of the Revue and the Righteous Mind's first stop off) to put something new together. They recruited teenage drummer Gaz Farmer and Scottish singer and former boxer Alex Lowe and thus Hurricane #1 was born.

I first heard the group via the Evening Session with their debut single Step Into My World which would dent the Top 30 in the early days of 1997 and I really liked it. Now I'm not quite sure why considering I really couldn't stand a lot of the drudge that was coming through in Oasis' wake at that time (and make no mistake, Hurricane #1 were very Oasis-influenced) but I think that line "I don't wanna spend the rest of my days running around chasing your shadow/So please don't let this chance slip away, if you waste it this time I won't be here tomorrow" might well have chimed in with my chasing after another girl who it turns out wasn't interested in me and I was probably in a bit of a sulk afterwards. By rights, that then should have been it but somehow the band kept on releasing good singles - Just Another Illusion had a funky swagger to it which you certainly wouldn't have got from Ocean Colour Scene or Cast while Chain Reaction despite some truly terrible lyrics ("I saw my baby cryin'/I said baby please don't cry" - yeah, I don't know how that one got past the vetting process either) packed enough of a punch to make it enjoyable.

I was actually really looking forward to Hurricane #1's debut album after a decent opening salvo but it turned out to be a bit of a missed opportunity - unfortunately one bad trait they clearly picked up off Oasis was not selecting their best songs for the album. The group had some killer B-sides like Keep Walking, Smoke Rings and Touchdown but for whatever reason none of them made the cut and while about two thirds of the album was really good (Strange Meeting, written about the breakup of Ride, might just have been the band's best song and the heartfelt ballad Monday Afternoon is a good 'un as well) there was also an noticeable amount of filler with the likes of Stand In Line, Mother Superior and Lucky Man just being dull. Switch those three out and the three above B-sides in and you'd have had an absolutely killer album, as it was it was just quite good. But still, there was plenty of room to sort that out or so we thought...

Unfortunately they'd never really be given the chance as they promptly proceeded to blow their credibility in, it has to be said, one of the stupidest ways possible. Early '98 saw the group release a new single, the big orchestral ballad Only The Strongest Will Survive which became their biggest hit to date, reaching the Top 20. Around this time, they were approached by the right-wing scumbags at the Sun newspaper to allow them to use the track in an advert. If you believe the legend, the band were tied at two for and two against as to whether to let them which led to Creation having the casting vote and, presumably needing the money after all those copies of Be Here Now they'd had to stuff into a landfill, they voted to allow it. It didn't just badly hurt the band, it effectively killed their career stone dead.

By the time the band's second album, also called Only The Strongest Will Survive, surfaced in late 1998 the game was pretty much up - they could have released an album which was as good as Definitely Maybe and Different Class combined and people still wouldn't have bought it because of them selling out to the Murdoch empire. Through gritted teeth, I did end up buying the album and actually, I'm gonna say it, it's not bad - in fact it's probably the better of the two Hurricane #1 albums. Twilight World was a laid back reflective funked-up number which was probably the album highlight but the bitter Greatest High, the gentle acoustic Price That We Pay and the epic Separation Sunday were all good as well.

Like I say though, unfortunately by this time the band were very much out in the cold - the album was slated in the music press and absolutely bombed. Soon afterwards, Creation closed its doors, Bell would leave to join Gay Dad (more on them in a future SFTJ I'm sure) before eventually ending up playing bass in Oasis (to be honest, a role way below his ability level) and Hurricane #1 were no more.

The demise of the monobrowed ones in 2009 would see Bell and Gardener, having reconciled a few years previously, reform Ride with the original line-up and they're still going strong to this day having put out a couple of "better than they had any right to be" albums in the last few years (2017's Weather Diaries and 2019's This Is Not A Safe Place, both of which made the Top 10). Around the same time, Lowe would reform Hurricane #1 with Bell's blessing having put out a few solo albums and battled his way through a serious cancer scare. The reformed line-up (featuring former Soup Dragons and Teenage Fanclub drummer Paul Quinn) have put out a further three albums since reforming - 2015's Find What You Love And Let It Kill You, 2016's Melodic Rainbows and 2019's Buddha At The Gas Pump. I have to plead ignorance to the latter two but I did hear Find What You Love at the time it came out and thought it was okay - in keeping with Lowe's recent troubles it was a much more reflective and acoustic-led effort. To be honest, in spite of a somewhat regrettable tweet he posted recently supporting Donald Trump, it's just good to see the guy still around and fighting fit.

So yeah, Hurricane #1. In keeping with the name they were very much a band who blew hot and cold but across those two albums and various B-sides they came up with some decent stuff at the end of the day. If you can get past the Sun thing, their back catalogue's worth a revisit and is probably a lot better than you remember it.