Happy Mondays
Bummed

THE REVIEW

The English underclass of the late Eighties manages to no longer be a "voice without an echo." In Italy, there was Lotta Continua, Parco Lambro, the Area... and I don't know if this helped or not the unfolding of our own militancy. In England, they are different, we are different, we could never identify with a gentleman of the working class. It’s a whole different situation, another mood, one might say.

The rogue Ryder brothers formed the Happy Mondays in 1981, but we mustn't forget that monkey Bez on percussion...

The disco is an alienating place, techno emerges with the fathers of the genre, and New Order and similar bands fuel the new wave/synth pop. Meanwhile, those most seduced by the Sixties psychedelic revival of the Madchester wave find their anchors in Stone Roses and Happy Mondays.

"Bummed" from 1988 is perhaps the "perfect" work. They had already announced it with "Squirrel And G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile." Then, with the nineties, we find the funky cocktail of "Kinky Afro," the whirlwinds of "Step On," "Hallelujah" and the "chemical" jingle jangle of "Loose Fit."

"Mad Cyril" and "Wrote For Luck" represent the boom and perhaps the zenith of the combo. Here is summarized all the lyricism, the story of what I said before. An essential photograph of the period, a paradise of the first raves. The album title means depressed, emblematic of which is the cover, consecrating themselves as banners of youth malaise. That mad mind of Shawn Ryder pours all his personality into the lyrics and his typical way of singing... a "synthetic" nonchalance in torments and ecstatic sensations. He said, "We are all children of Thatcher." Naturally, they contest the old national mummies...

The notes and arpeggios obscured by the trance equate to a strobe. "Country Song" and "Moving In With" are the emblems of Madchesterian dance. It all seems unstable, elusive, artificial, surreal. They perform obsessive progressions in a completely estranging ambient. "Brain Dead" is the pleasure of entering the tunnel of the sweet synths of "Temptation."

"Lazyitis" is like staring at water and glimpsing a figure slowly forming. The Beatles and the sitars that reappear with the pleasure of being garnished by Ryder's extravagant declamations.

A natural oasis of ethereal sounds immersed in a colorful nebula.