Longpigs
The Sun Is Often Out

THE REVIEW

In musical jargon, "one hit wonder" tends to indicate an artist who easily achieves success with just one song or album, only to disappear from the scene as quickly as they made an impact.
This can happen, in my opinion, for three reasons: the artist has a stroke of luck, composes the song of a lifetime but actually lacks the talent to stay afloat; the artist has talent but not broad enough shoulders to bear the weight of success, leading everything to end in drugs, sex, and very little good rock’n’roll, or, and here we get to the Longpigs, misfortune strikes.
The band of singer-songwriter Crispian Hunt released "The Sun Is Often Out" in 1996, establishing themselves as one of the pleasant realities of the brit-pop wave. Subsequently, contractual disputes (this same album languished for months due to the bankruptcy of their first label), internal conflicts following exhausting tours (the drummer quit almost immediately), but above all a car accident with a resulting coma for Hunt, led the Longpigs to creative exhaustion, the making of the disappointing "Mobile Home" and their consequent disappearance from the scene.

Analyzing that debut carefully, especially now that brit-pop is a faint memory, the regret increases for a band that hinted at excellent qualities and from which a remarkable artistic maturity in future works was expected.
"The Sun Is Often Out" is a pure guitar-rock album, where the band’s sound, supported by the inevitable influence of the Smiths, ends up positioning itself halfway between the instinctive rock of the early Radiohead and the melodic attitude of the best Suede.
The unique vocal style and lyrics of Hunt, the musical style of guitarist Richard Hawley (with Pulp before embarking on a successful solo career), vaguely similar to that of Johnny Greenwood, provide additional elements to appreciate the twelve tracks well beyond the sole fantastic ballad "On & On", a single that was a victim of heavy rotation on English radio at the time.

If, despite everything, you miss brit-pop a little and if you end up feeling a bit of sympathy for those who could do nothing against misfortune, visiting your trusted music store in search of this album might turn out to be yet another pleasant musical discovery.