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Rating: 1997: the Mansun debut. "Attack Of The Grey Lantern" opens a darker, more complex, and magmatic path within brit-pop. The second work is eagerly awaited. But it doesn't arrive. Instead, the sixth arrives: the Mansun, like ambitious pole vaulters, aim directly at significant heights. And here is "Six". A "concept album", or rather, a conceptual album, where brit-pop is mixed with progressive, punk, classical music ("Fall Out" opens with a modern interpretation of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker), opera ("Witness To A Murder: Part Two"), and where one gets lost in a genuine labyrinth of sounds.
It is said that the Mansun entered the studio with about thirty ideas and sketches. Instead of eliminating some and drawing from the best excerpts 12 canonical songs, Paul Draper and company choose to keep them all and assemble them into a hypnotic 70-minute collage. The result is 13 songs of extremely unequal length (from the minute and a half of "Inverse Midas" - piano and voice - to the nine minutes of "Cancer"), and it results in an astonishing album.
Like an Escher painting, like the library in "The Name of the Rose": along a religious (heretical, it is understood) and existential thematic plot, one is forced to follow an asymmetric jumble of absurdly (but geometrically) structured sounds. Some songs seem to have swallowed others, like the exceptional "Cancer", which moves from prog to hard rock, from a solo piano interlude to a finale of keyboards and whispered melodies, with a 15-second pseudo-Beatlesque freaky insert; or like "Six", a jumble of at least four different songs that intersect with each other. You descend, you ascend, you enter a song and emerge in another (while remaining in the same), with pieces that seem to blend and exchange with each other, creating a dizzying effect that, if bewildering and overwhelming at first listen, ends up being exciting, precisely because of the inability to bring order to a chaos that nevertheless manages to appear combined and orchestrated. Cases of loss and recovery, disappearance and recognition, are continuous: the finale of "Fall Out" is given by the guitar riff that will dominate the spectacular "Legacy" (the first single and the most melodic track); "Being A Girl" is a two-minute punk song, which (after unquestionably ending) has a five-minute prog tail; "Special / Blown it (delete as appropriate)", with its significant title of one and threefold, has an intro of more than two minutes (drums, piano and guitar processed with a dazed and unnerving outcome) that opens, at the least expected moment, into a high-level punk-rock release. And so do "Shotgun", "Television", the fantastic "Anti-Everything". The result is unclassifiable, impossible to categorize.
Calvino's combinatory made rock.
It is without a doubt the most courageous (and most enduring?) result of the Mansun and the entire brit-pop. Then Draper and company produced the meaningless "Little Kix", which rhymes with "Six" but has nothing to do with it. Then the breakup, not before almost completing a fourth album that saw the light maimed ("Kleptomania"), but at least leaves a good memory. These days comes the nostalgic "Legacy: The Best Of Mansun".
Certainly, "Six" is enough for the legacy of the Mansun to be decidedly reevaluated: it would not be fair for them to experience what, in the tail of "Legacy", Draper sings desolately ad libitum: "Nobody cares when you're gone...".
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Six (08:07)
And you see, I kind of shivered to conformity
Did you see the way I cowered to authority
You see, my life, it's a series of compromises anyway
It's a sham, and I'm conditioned to accept it all, you see
(More) than I had before
(More) than I've presently got
(More) than I'll ever use up
(More) than I really need
(More) than I had before
(More) than I could possibly spend
(More) than I'll ever use up
(More) than I really need
It's more than I can spare
My religion is caged
Safe from progress, purgatory I know
How does this affect me
Emotionally affect me
Will they let me go
Will they let me go
Will they let me go
Equilibrium imbalanced again
I feel no pain
I feel no...
I feel no pain
The Jabberwocky haunts me, in my memory it's caged
I feel no pain (I feel no pain)
I feel no... (I feel no...)
I feel no pain (I feel no...)
But if you punched me in the stomach then I'd feel it again
Life is a compromise anyway
Life is a compromise anyway
Life, it's a compromise anyway
Life, it's a compromise anyway
And it's a sham, and I'll accept it all
And you see, I kind of shivered to conformity
Did you see the way I cowered to authority
You see, and my life, it's a series of compromises anyway
It's a sham, and I'm conditioned to accept it all, you see
02 Negative (04:21)
Stop, you're looking miserable Can't be bothered getting up today My future's looking positive No one even picked on me today So you tested negative Panic in your bedsit goes away You convert to scientology To feel part of something once again I look downwards I look downwards Feeling negative, looking negative I see downwards I see downwards I look downwards I see negative, feeling negative Looking downwards Have you ever told a lie to hide a lie Shame on you, you've compromised again 'Cos things are closing in on you Not so far away as they may seem Have you ever told a lie to hide a lie Shame on you, you've compromised again And things are closing in on you Not so far away as they may seem Someone knocked me in the street Someone looked at me twice Now I'm negative Someone nudged me in the street Someone poked me in the eye Now I'm negative
07 Serotonin (02:33)
My migraine makes me ill
My electricity is low
My laceration soothes itself
My chemicals flow
And I'm boosting what I take
Just like the Germans, getting off
On herbal vacuum - pumps of blow
It shows all I know
And I drop and I drop
And my body levels drop
And my nerves clogging up
Sucking all the substance up
With this method that I have found
I'm redressing all I know
I can change the amount of God
That wraps around me
From a satellite they fire
Serotonin from eight miles
Above Deeside in binary
It orbits my street
(Redux, redux, redux, redux
Redux, redux, redux, redux
Redux, redux, redux, redux)
My chemist is the only friend that I've got
11 Special/Blown It (Delete as Appropriate) (05:32)
I've blown it in every single way
Screwed every single chance that came
You're a super star in waiting for the silver screen
Then the pressure came
Swept away in a tidal wave
Could be all of you, still awake at noon
Blew my chances in a tragic flurry, sweeping apathy
Buy all my food from the B.P store when the night kicks in
I'm turning my back on everyone
I've blown everything I've ever done
I've fucked it up, shot my load
Spewed onto the motorway shoulder
I could have been somebody special
I'm not such a tragic waste of space
I could bring happiness to people
Just one more greatest hits tour for the devotees
The same old faces came
They love their summer spectaculars
By the grace of God could be up by noon
And not a tragic waster but I can't stay focused for my apathy
They could have bought me a brand new car and a house in France
I've really blown it now
Blew it all away on a whim
Sat on my own for far too long
Things could have been so different now
Life looks so confusing through my window bay
Just to see a face, I'm really pleased when the gas man comes
Could be all of you still awake at noon
Blew my chances in a tragic flurry of apathy
All my food from a B.P store when the night kicks in
I've really blown it now
Blew it all away on a whim
But I fucked it up, shot my load
Spewed onto the motorway shoulder
I could have been somebody special
12 Legacy (06:33)
If you fear transition to your other life don't need money to be there
Leave behind your money just to prove your worth won't be here so I don't care
If you strap your conscience to your vision thing won't be here so I don't care
Prove your worth to people that you called your friends won't be here so I don't care
I wouldn't care if I was washed up tomorrow you see reading novels is banned by the Marquis de Sade
All relationships are emptying and temporary
Life is wearing me thin I feel so drained my legacy a sea of faces just like me and life is wearing me thin
I feel so drained my legacy a sea of faces just like me
I've been drained emotion is a bitter fate won't be here so I don't care
I concede relationships have left me weak won't be here so I don't care
Look for something worthy to replace my guilt won't be here so I don't care
Prove my worth to people who I called my friends won't be here so I don't care
I wouldn't care if I was washed up tomorrow you see reading novels is banned by the Marquis de Sade
All relationships are emptying and temporary
Life is wearing me thin I feel so drained my legacy a sea of faces just like me and life is wearing me thin
I feel so drained my legacy a sea of faces just like me
Nobody cares when you're gone nobody cares when you're gone
Nobody cares when you're gone nobody cares when you're gone
13 Being a Girl (07:59)
Being a boy's like sucking on a lemon
And I judge myself by the adverts I see
My deodorant hides the real me
These things elevate me above animals
I feel like being a girl
Being a girl, being a girl, being a girl, being a girl
And my life never tasted sweeter
I'm so boring, my clothes wanna keep
Someone else warm, someone cooler
Tax on cigarettes, treats my cancer
These things elevate me above animals
A frog, it cannot comprehend the sea
Nor me happiness
Girl is much to weak a word for me
Made from balsa wood
Being a girl, being a girl
I want to experience being a girl
I want to experience being a girl
I want to experience being a girl
The only pureness left is preached by Marx
Time to contemplate
Never been informed there must be poor
Or the rich won't be rich no more
The only pureness left is preached for me by Marx
The only pureness left is preached for me by Marx
The only pureness left is preached by Marx
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