Bugger the Plugger cos there'll be another. (Hup - Wonder Stuff)

Member Name: BiologicalWeapon

Product:	Hup - Wonder Stuff
Date:	31/05/06 (96 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quite poignant songs, which only resonate with you after a while.

Disadvantages: Takes an acquired taste to some songs.

When the Wonder Stuff came out with this, I was not particularly knowledgeable about their music, their cynical outlook on life and record companies, or the shithole that is Birmingham.

I had just left school and my life was very much in transition and emotionally it was a disturbing roller coaster. The song 'Don't Let Me Down Gently' came out and I never realised it was about being dumped by a girlfriend till much (year or so) later. Another Brummie - Mike Skinner - made a more heartfelt plea in his moneyspinner. I sincerely didn't know what they were singing about, or who it was pitched at. Then in autumn 1989, I bought the album not knowing what to expect. It was not my cup of tea to start off with. I was more interested in the music than the amusing bittersweet lyrics for which they are legendary.

I think you need to play it on a large set of speakers in a nightclub to appreciate the guitar settings in pieces like Good Night Though, Room 410, Them Big Oak Trees, and Lets Be Other People. They have to bring out the deep tonal qualities of the music, which may remain hidden on less musically endowed speakers. At first I did not enjoy these pieces, except Room 410 was quite musically tumultuous.

I liked Golden Green and Unfaithful for the musical arrangements, and saw these two pieces as quite a welcome harmonious interlude in a very grungy (although I knew not of this word till a year later) album. It was like taking the smooth with the rough.

So, how did I start to like it more?

Well, with difficulty. I never at that time knew Birmingham, and the nature of its people, which could have explained the despairing themes in the album. I got to know other music similar to them, and I bought their first album, which gave me a history lesson of their experiences (usually bitter ones) of the world. A few months later I got romantically involved with some lovely but lukewarm women, and the songs started to concur with my simmering desires (of the heart). After hearing songs such as Can't Shape Up and Good Night Though on better electronic equipment, they started to shine a bit more in their own right. Room 410, a song I liked on first hearing, was perceptually darker when you could hear all the settings.

I found out more about previous musical excursions that they had participated in, and then like pieces in a jigsaw, I began to see specifically (there's no accident in who it is aimed at) what the songs were about. With so much incidental crap on national radio at the time (early 1990s), anything by the Wonder Stuff was like a weather-torn beacon in the poorly-orchestrated fog. I was not appreciative of the anger in their songs to begin with - I thought it was bizarrely childish - but later found it a strange relief that people thought like that in such colourful ways, and their emotions were no 'mock up' found in many recording artists. Radio Ass Kiss I think has echoes of 'Rick Astley' somewhere in there, a reminder of the lack of love between Miles Hunt and the record industry, notably their lack of taste.

Summary: The Brummie guide to Life, The Universe and Everything