Sounds From The Junkshop #48 - Sing-Sing

 

“With me there are no conventions, see me without my pretensions” - Sing-Sing - I’ll Be

We’ve already encountered Emma Anderson, one half of Sing-Sing, in SFTJ’s past when we covered Lush, the band she made her name with, a few months ago on Sounds From The Junkshop. When that band abruptly ended following the tragic suicide of drummer Chris Acland, the remaining members would go their separate ways with bassist Phil King joining the Jesus & Mary Chain for the disappointing Munki album and Miki Berenyi taking some time off from the music business, only resurfacing at the Lush reunion (and subsequently moving on to Piroshka) a couple of decades later.

So I suppose you could say that Emma was really the only one out of Lush to remain creatively active after the band split as she would link up with singer Lisa O'Neill to form Sing-Sing (the group would also rescue drummer Justin Welch from the wreckage of Elastica for their first couple of singles and early gigs). I first encountered them via a split single on (who else?) Fierce Panda with fellow SFTJ alumni Linoleum with the track I Can See You and I have to admit it threw me for a bit of a loop with its pounding drums and ethereal vocals. They would right things nicely with their first single proper though, Feels Like Summer, which surfaced in late 1998. A melancholy slice of folk-pop about getting your head together following the end of a relationship ("I've been standing here on top of the world, breathing the air/And I can tell you now, without a doubt, the outlook is fair") it showed that Anderson hadn't lost her knack with a tune which had shone through on Lush's Split and Lovelife albums and that in O'Neill she'd found a good foil as a frontwoman.

Signing to Alan McGee's Poptones label, the group's third single I'll Be was even stronger, keeping the summery feel of its predecessor and packing a sublime slice of romantic yearning into its lyrics and chorus. In a sign that this band were definitely going to be a different proposition entirely from Lush it didn't even feature a guitar on it with the haunting synths doing most of the work. A great song - if you're only going to listen to one Sing-Sing track then this is the one I'd recommend.

The group's debut album The Joy Of Sing-Sing surfaced in 2001 and was a bit of a curate's egg, veering between some sublime slices of pop such as Tegan (which sounded oddly like Sleater-Kinney giving Duran Duran's Rio an indie makeover) with some stuff that was just a bit too wilfully difficult to get into. Nevertheless, it was a strong effort which got good reviews (the band also made some decent headway Stateside and toured over there a lot) and things were looking promising.

Alas, as per the usual SFTJ story, this is where it went a bit wrong. 2002 saw McGee suddenly shut Poptones down and Sing-Sing ended up going into an enforced period of hibernation. They wouldn't resurface until 2005 and as I mentioned last week in the Crocketts entry, by this point I'd well and truly drifted away from indie music into heavier waters meaning I wouldn't even listen to their second album, 2005's Sing-Sing And I until about three years after it came out when I downloaded it off an indie label subscription website. Similar to the debut, it has its ups and downs but there's some fine stuff on here, notably lead off single Come Sing Me A Song, a truly joyous slice of Bacharach indebted orchestral pop and the driving feminist anthem Modern Girl (although that one slightly got ruined for me when a girl I was dating at the time pointed out its similarity to Kylie's dull robodisco effort Can't Get It Out Of My Head by singing the lyrics over the top - yeah, cheers for that...)

As I mentioned earlier, by the time I got hip to Sing-Sing's second album it was about 2008-09 and the band had already split up. Emma would eventually resurface in the ill-fated Lush reunion half a decade or so later while O'Neill would go on to a solo career which I've not yet heard anything of - the girl had a good voice though so it's certainly something I'll look out for. Anyway, both of Sing-Sing's albums are still doing the rounds on Spotify and although they're both a bit inconsistent, there's some lovely sinister summery pop on there which is well worth your attention.

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