The Cribs - Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever

Fuck the NME. Fuck them right up the arse with a pointy stick. Fuck XFM. Fuck polka dot dresses, new rave and the ‘re-birth’ of indie guitar music, because without all that overblown, empty dollar green garbage, The Cribs new album would be number one for a hundred million years and The Kooks would spontaneously combust in the face of the awesome power of three brothers from Wakefield who write the best songs this fledgling century has seen.

As you might have gathered, it’s hard for me to undersell The Cribs. Their presence in British music is like a little Radio Caroline, bobbing about in treacherous circumstances, battling through the jaunty and the desperate on the airwaves to re-assure you that you’re not going mad. Their first album, ‘The Cribs’, was a DIY effort which burned through 40 odd minutes of adrenaline guitars, shouting and Beatles-esque melodies. It was a gem which was left in the dust as the majors pushed out The Thrills, The Coral and other soft going singalong albums in time for festival season of 2004. The follow up ‘The New Fellas’ was a hook-led classic. Something of a climb down from the rattiness of the first album, but it held chart worthy songs like ‘Mirror Kissers’, ‘Hey Scenesters’ and ‘Martell’ which amused the Radio One playlist for a good few weeks. With Alex Kapranos at the helm, some were expecting a sharper, more poppy album this time round. ‘Men’s Needs’ is anything but a compromise to the current scene. You can hear the influence of Kapranos as vocals are shoved up front, the distortion has been reduced and the hook lines and iron-clad melodies are given a starring role.

More than anything this album is threatening the boundaries of what the indie revivalists expect from a record. There is not one second of filler on this offering, listen to any big seller from The Kooks, The Feeling, The Killers and try and say the same, the words’ll stick in your throat. In fact, it’s difficult to keep a straight face discussing these bands in the same breath as The Cribs, although they’ve been lumped together by every magazine and radio station going. The record starts with the spastic rallying cry of ‘Our Bovine Public’, reducing The Cribs so-called rivals to porridge in the space of 2 minutes and 16 seconds. Any one of the next eight tracks could be a single, horrifically catchy equality anthem ‘Men’s Needs’ has been, and ‘Moving Pictures’, the half mournful, half hopeful tune that feels like you’ve always known it, is the next one out of the bag. The big surprise of the record is ‘Be Safe’, which marries a marching bassline to the spoken words of Lee Renaldo (of Sonic Youth) and a rousing event chorus. It will sneak up on you and assault you before delivering you battered into the end of the album and the warm waters of ‘Shoot The Poets’, a sweet anti-love song with a touching vocal from Ryan Jarman.

In all probability The Cribs will survive the poisoned association with the increasingly generic indie scene, and will still be releasing albums as brilliant as this one when the likes of The View are ‘pursuing other projects’. In the meantime, The Cribs are flicking vs at the bands they recently lambasted on stage at Glastonbury and going off on tour to be with the already converted, who are getting smugger by the minute.