Nite Songs

  Paul Draper's second solo album following his extended hiatus after the break-up of Mansun was something I was excited to see land in my reviews pile. As I've mentioned when I did an SFTJ on Mansun many moons ago, I loved the band's classic debut Attack of the Grey Lantern  but subsequent releases never really did it for me. Having missed Draper's comeback, 2017's Spooky Action , I was interested to see how his sound had evolved since those halcyon days. Similar to a lot of Mansun's work, Cult Leader Tactics  is an album with a theme running through it, in this case people using manipulation to get what they want. Whether it's fraudulent self-help gurus (the title track), dysfunctional relationships ( You've Got No Life Skills, Baby! ), sniping critics ( Talkin' Behind My Back ) or the serial liars governing this country ( Internationalle ), there's a fair amount of Draper's trademark venom here and it's a much better album for it. Mus...

  "The lyrics aren’t supposed to mean that much, they’re just a vehicle for a lovely voice..."  - Mansun , An Open Letter Yo The Lyrical Trainspotter , 1996 By early 1997, it's fair to say that most people kind of knew Britpop was living on borrowed time. With Oasis blundering through a cocaine blizzard towards the musical dog turd that was Be Here Now  and Blur and Pulp both in the process of essentially abandoning the genre all together in favour of heading into more musically challenging waters, it left the scene running on fumes to all intents and purposes with none of the newer bands who'd sprung up towards the poppier end of indie really having anything much to offer beyond half-arsed rehashes of what Noel, Damon and Jarvis had done much better two years ago. It had had its moment in the sun but now it was just waiting for someone to administer the death blow to it which would duly come in the form of Blur's "couldn't be less poppy if it tried"...