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Rating: This debut album by the unforgettable Mansun had a strange life (much like the band's own career): released in March 1997 when the Chester quartet was practically unknown, this record shot to number 1 in the UK charts, dethroning none other than Blur.
During a Japanese tour that same year, Mansun were received as international superstars at the level of an actual "beatlemania"! It's not uncommon for English bands to receive such a welcome in the Land of the Rising Sun, but for a group that, until a few months earlier, was playing in modest clubs across Great Britain, it was still an extraordinary feat. The album's halved price led to a small cult success for Mansun in Italy as well, so much so that their subsequent works were much less followed: this does not take away from the fact that "Attack Of The Grey Lantern" is, in itself, a masterpiece, or almost.
It is a sort of concept album quite anomalous for the standards of 90s pop, with lyrics bringing forth situations and characters that seem to be taken from Oscar Wilde's works. In fact, aesthetically, Mansun presented themselves as a band halfway between typically dandy attitudes (reminiscent of both early Bowie and early Duran Duran) and a sound in any case closely tied to the independent scene, and conceptually, the lyrics by the singer Paul Draper (a perverse cross between Brett Anderson and Damon Albarn) address a dark tale of religion, sex, and love, transparently showing a polemic vein against the bourgeois hypocrisies of modern society.
The tracks are entwined with each other almost always through sudden noises, preserving the personality of each song... so it cannot be labeled as true prog style. The acoustic "The Chad Who Loved Me" opens the record as if it were to introduce an apocalyptic musical, with imperious strings that seem to fall like waterfalls, spilling over into a very acidic and very indie tune (for 1997). "The Only Mansun's Love Song," mocking right from the title, is a soft and subtly vicious ballad… but the best is yet to come.
"Taxloss", a polemical single (accompanied by a controversial video where the band members threw real banknotes in the London Underground), begins like electronic garage punk, somewhat à la Devo, only to freeze with a powerful dance interlude irresponsibly bolstered by electric guitars… in fact, the song's flow and its dissolved, "liquid" finale seem to suggest the idea of an orgasm. "You. Why Do You Hate Me?" is a brief ballad for voice and acoustic guitar also broken by the almost grunge intervention of the guitars, but it ends up being just a tasty appetizer for the album's peak: the stunning and ethereal "Wide Open Space", decadent and outrageous, immediately followed by the equally sharp "Stripped Vicar", a tale of a priest devoted to strip-tease, irresistible in the chorus (which freely borrows from "Changes", the David Bowie classic) supported by the ingenious indie/dance/pop/punk/new wave medley.
Throughout the album, Mansun seem to hit all the marks: the psychedelic soft jazz of "Disgusting", the pop halfway between Primal Scream, Suede, and XTC of "She Makes My Nose Bleed", the delicate and harmonious "Naked Twister", the guitar rock with glam nuances of "Egg Shaped Fred" (also featuring a keyboard inspired by "Hush" by Deep Purple), and the pyrotechnic finale entrusted to the epic Ashcroftian ballad "Dark Mavis", which not only represents the conclusion of the intricate story narrated between tracks, but also showcases a band capable of repeatedly striving for the sublime and, in the end, truly reaching it, with the endless string section that takes up the initial theme, a clamour of melancholy and, how shall we say, "romanticism" destined to be etched in memory for a long time.
If you ever find this album somewhere (the cover is beautiful), listen to this lost gem from the past decade: it also costs little and certainly won't do you any harm.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Mansun's Only Love Song (05:55)
If I start this small debate
The centre of the universe is up for sale
If my melody should fall
The tune is unimportant as I said before
Or should I say it was the words, I should
Standing in grey lantern light
Mavis looking sexy through her dress it shines
Hiding in the vestry she recites her lines, she says
I can't see you, I love you, I miss you
I can't see you, I love you, I do
If I feel God watching me
I control the actions of his destiny
All my sentiments ring true
You feel him in the mirror laughing back at you
If I could tell you how it seems, I would
If I start this small debate
The centre of the universe is gone for sale
So my melody should fall
The tune is unimportant as I said before
If I could tell you how it seems, I would
03 Taxloss (07:02)
He'll be your taxloss lover from Liverpool
Taxloss lover if the truth be told
Taxloss lover still lives in the war
Taxloss lover touching 74
Come back to me
We want your money
Taxloss
We think you are stupid
We give you our money cos our assets are fluid yeah
We'll sell you down the river
Just remember that we said we'd deliver you
Sign on the line and we'll give you the money
and then you'll be mine and we'll fly somewhere sunny
and you'll quibble that our drivell seems unsatisfactory
You're a taxloss
Come back to me
We want your money taxloss
He's your taxloss lover and his nickname is Bert
Taxloss lover and he's always a flirt
Taxloss lover's into kinky sex
Taxloss lover wears a cracking dress
Taxloss
Mud rock
Junk pop
Chart hop
Mop top
Swap shop who'd you'd nick your cliche off
05 Wide Open Space (04:31)
I'm in a wide open space, I'm standing
I'm all alone and staring in to space
It's always quiet through my ceiling
The roof comes in and crashes in a daze
(Chorus)
I'm in a wide open space, it's freezing
You'll never get to heaven with a smile on your face from me
I'm in a wide open space, I'm staring
There's something quite bizzare I cannot see
I'm on the top of a hill, I'm lonely
There's someone here to shout to miles away
I could be back at my house, for I care
They do not hear me, it's the same old case
(Chorus x2)
06 Stripper Vicar (04:05)
Dear Mavis I'm compelled to write this letter
In the hope that you may soon be getting better
I've a feeling you should go and see a doctor
If you haven't then you know you really oughta
I was worried so I went to see the vicar
But before I could confess he first confessed to be a stripper
Dear Mavis it was very strange to see him
So I thought I'd write and ask your opinion
Should I grass on him, report him to the cardinal
Or wether I should egg him on to turn professional
If I dob on him they'll call him plastic scouser
But the only thing the stripper wears is plastic trousers
Mavis' opinion is all we really seek
Mavis' opinion is all we
Should we lie while he's still alive
Should we lie while he's still alive
'Cos when the vicar strips he gets away with it
Dear Mavis thought I'd follow up my letter
Drop a line about the fate of our poor vicar
Very tragically his time on earth is ended
Found him gagged and bound in stockings and suspenders
Dear Mavis if you tell us what our thoughts are
And I hope that they're not biased 'cos you are the vicar's daughter
Mavis' opinion is all we really seek
Mavis' opinion is all we
Should we lie now that he has died
Should we lie now that he has died
'Cos when the vicar strips he gets away with it
And we know him as our vicar
And by night a part-time stripper
And the vicar got suspended
In his stockings and suspenders
And he's making wine from water
While he dresses like his daughter
And we know that he's a rip off
'Cos we've seen him with his kit off
Should we lie now that he has died
Should we lie now that he has died
'Cos when the vicar strips he gets away with it
07 Disgusting (05:07)
You're the stranger in here, with your stanger face
You know that everyone can see it's false
Something's rotten with you, you show no regret
Like we all know that you're supposed to do
I hope you've changed the way you think
I hope you've changed the clothes you wear
I hope that you regret these things you say
I hope in time that things will change
I think you know that anyway
You've been disgraceful
It's so regretful
You're disgusting
You know you've been disgraceful
It's so regretful
You've been disgusting
You're the outcast here, you're the native of a place
You've moved and been excluded too
You create a tension, when we were the same
There was a pressure that would force you to
You're so full of venom that you'll spit into you're own sweet face, oh
Disgusting
Disgusting
You were disgusting
You know you've been disgusting
You're so regretful
08 She Makes My Nose Bleed (03:55)
She makes me bleed, oh yeah
She makes me cry
She makes me sneeze, oh yeah
She makes me sigh
(Bridge)
So bring her on down
Bring her on down from heaven
Bring her on down
Bring her on down from heaven
My only number must be must be
(Chorus)
Bring her on down by the souls of her feet
Slappin' around and making her bleed
I vowed to my god I'd give it all up
If he would bring her on down from heaven
She makes me bleed, oh yeah
Don't know her name
She makes me freeze, oh yeah
She's in my face
(Bridge)+(Chorus)
Bringe her on down by the souls of her feet
Slappin' around and making her bleed
I vowed to my god I'd give it all up
Don't know her name, don't know what she's done
(Chorus)
10 Egg Shaped Fred (04:11)
I'm sick of all this scratching around
I'm calling Fred to come and give me a hand
He's the queen of all the shops where he shops
And he's the king of all the scene, to be seen
Skinima nosebreak
Fatima toothpaste
Penelope cheapskate
Claudia farmgate
We're taking egg shaped Fred for tea
We'll make them sit strategically
We'll test their egg-ability
We'll make them meet
He only wants to get in your kecks
So he can carry out his own little test
He only wants to get in your pants
Because he knows that you have played in a band
Skinima nosebreak
Fatima toothpaste
Penelope cheapskate
Claudia farmgate
Mavis she knows
Mavis she knows
She's got all these things around her
All things to no men
She see you in hell
I'll go shopping instead
He will send his centipede to sort ya'
He stretched it out to make it two foot taller
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