The Cribs
The Cribs
Men’s Needs
Great pop: what is it? A song that hijacks your life for three minutes, skewers some conflict buried deep in your subconscious then vanishes, leaving you limp and delirious?
Welcome to ‘Men’s Needs’. The first offering from the Wakefield wastrels’ long-awaited third album, ‘Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever’, it proves the brothers Jarman have finally done their time in the indie gig mines and learned their lessons well.
The larynx-shredding vocal, the needle-sharp guitar riff (polished to a shine by knob-twiddler extraordinaire Alex Kapranos, natch) the sexy, post-modern handclaps – this is gold-standard indie-glam that is sure to delight anyone and everyone from Alex Zane to the furthest reaches of MySpazz. And then there’s the lyrics. “Have you noticed, I’ve never been impressed by offers from New York and London?” rasps Ryan, sharper than a champagne glass in the back, ruthlessly dissecting both the mating game and his band’s own drunken journey through rock. It’s like ‘Mardy Bum’ meets ‘Take Me Out’ except with Kurt Cobain on vocals. No wonder their recent tour of the nation’s shoeboxes almost ended in death and disaster – on this form, 2007 is theirs for the taking.
“A girl’s needs/Just don’t agree/With men’s needs”, hollers Ryan. The world stops, the penny drops. What is it? Great pop.
Welcome to ‘Men’s Needs’. The first offering from the Wakefield wastrels’ long-awaited third album, ‘Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever’, it proves the brothers Jarman have finally done their time in the indie gig mines and learned their lessons well.
The larynx-shredding vocal, the needle-sharp guitar riff (polished to a shine by knob-twiddler extraordinaire Alex Kapranos, natch) the sexy, post-modern handclaps – this is gold-standard indie-glam that is sure to delight anyone and everyone from Alex Zane to the furthest reaches of MySpazz. And then there’s the lyrics. “Have you noticed, I’ve never been impressed by offers from New York and London?” rasps Ryan, sharper than a champagne glass in the back, ruthlessly dissecting both the mating game and his band’s own drunken journey through rock. It’s like ‘Mardy Bum’ meets ‘Take Me Out’ except with Kurt Cobain on vocals. No wonder their recent tour of the nation’s shoeboxes almost ended in death and disaster – on this form, 2007 is theirs for the taking.
“A girl’s needs/Just don’t agree/With men’s needs”, hollers Ryan. The world stops, the penny drops. What is it? Great pop.
The Cribs close John Peel Stage on day one of Glastonbury 2008
The Cribs
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