Sounds From The Junkshop #83 - Crackout

 

"Work it out and I'll be everyone around me/If you really want that then you better tell me" - Crackout - I Am The One

It's a bit sad that even twenty years on, the main thing I remember Crackout for is going to see them at Leeds Festival in 2002 when they were opening the bill on the second stage when they fell victim to an almost Spinal Tap-esque self-inflicted stage error while opening their set. The group were about to kick in with their then-new single I Am The One and the singer and bassist were playing the gentle opening riff leaning against their amps at the side of the stage before charging across and leaping over as the main riff kicked in in the best Symposium stylee. The trouble is that in doing so, their lead singer managed to pull his guitar lead clean out of his amp which left him desperately trying to motion the roadie to plug him back in as he was singing the first verse!

Crackout hailed from Oxford and I think I'd first encountered them on a compilation by local label Shifty Disco way way back in the late '90s while I was DJ'ing at KUBE radio in Keele. The song was called Chuck and had an energetic thrashy pop-punk sound to it which piqued my interest but further releases weren't forthcoming for a good three or four years afterwards. Apparently the band had released said single while they were still at school and after they finished sixth form they ended up going through a line-up change and re-emerging with a slightly heavier sound.

When the group re-emerged in the early noughties, the aggression had definitely been dialled up and the resultant album This Is Really Neat had a sort of spiky grunge-punk type feel to it similar to Mudhoney or maybe Soul Asylum circa While You Were Out. Unfortunately, it was very much out of step with the times - too heavy to appeal to the Strokes-worshipping NME and too deft to catch the cloth ears of the guileless nu-metal and frat-punk brigades (although I do remember a younger bandmate of mine at the time remarking that the album sounded a bit like a more serious and angry Blink-182 minus the nob jokes when I played him it).

I remember seeing Crackout quite a few times around this era - similar to bands like Baby Chaos and Kerbdog many years before they seemed to be the perpetual support band for a lot of the early noughties Britrock bands and I remember seeing them opening for Wilt and Therapy? in this era to name but two. It still didn't really help raise their profile though and when their second album Oh No failed to do any better than the first (sadly it was an inferior effort with the spikiness of old replaced by a more gothy sound which I should by all rights have liked but just seemed to lack the energy that had been the band's trademark at the beginning) they quietly split up in 2005.

Looking at Crackout's Wikipedia page, it seems that they actually hung around for a bit after disbanding with the three members regrouping first as Blackholes and then as Out Of The Afternoon, both of whom I missed altogether. Besuited drummer Nick Millard has filled in for the Kooks on a couple of tours since then (and has now apparently gone down the Alex from Blur route to become a cheesemaker!) while frontman Steven Eagles is now the Darkness' guitar tech. Looking back, Crackout were one of those bands who might have stood a fighting chance if they'd broken through in the late '90s alongside the likes of King Adora and Crashland (both of whom they arguably shared some musical DNA with) but unfortunately they released their debut album arguably a year or two too late for them to really grab a foothold in the music scene. That said, This Is Really Neat has actually held up surprisingly well and I'd definitely recommend giving it a listen if spiky angst-rock with some decent hooks and riffs is your thing.