Enjoy! You’ll have a blast! Cheapest merch table in Christendom too.
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My brother’s a HUGE HMHB fan. He had this album playing loud, on a loop, last time I went to visit him.
Beyond their wonderful, wonderful Christmas song - and a great one about breeding racing pigeons in Derby - they’ve always seemed a bit too mean-spirited for me. But he’s now making me a mix of HMHB songs he thinks I’ll like. I’m wary, but looking forward to hearing it!
Never seen a bad 'un! If Nigel’s in the right mood then the between song banter is of the highest order. Enjoy!
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I’d offer some recommendations of my own, but I don’t think I could keep it under 50 tracks! I’d be interested to see your brother’s picks.
I’ll post the tracklisting when I get it!
Mean-spirited? Hmm, it’s all pretty light-hearted I’d argue. I always get the vibe Nigel’s ‘punching up’.
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It’s just relentless, and it really gets me down. Also, some of the songs seem to have a mild anti-intellectual bent. I couldn’t tell you which ones exactly, but for example: there’s one in which he rhymes “Sylvia Plath” with “Matlock Bath”. I can’t remember the exact line, but the impression I got at the time was that he was implying that people who live in Matlock Bath shouldn’t be reading Sylvia Plath. And it’s just… why?
In many ways they’re like The Daily Mash, a site that can be extremely funny and which, like you say, almost always punches up. But at the same time, they seem to have a set idea of what constitutes as acceptable behaviour, and they seem to have a definition of “normal”, and anyone or anything that goes against that grain is worthy of scorn and contempt. It’s not a good look, in my book.
She stayed with me until she moved to Notting Hill
She said it was the place she needs to be
Where the cocaine is fair trade, and frequently displayed
Is the Buena Vista Social Club CD
I thought she’d be back in three weeks and we’d go wandering the Peaks
Sojourn in my Uncle Joe’s ashram
For when you’re in Matlock Bath you don’t need Sylvia Plath
Not while they’ve got Mrs. Gibson’s Jam
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Ah yeah. His position in that track is of someone who’s desires and abilities fall little further than taking the volvo up to the Peak District, while the person he’s in love with seeks fairtrade cocaine, featureless TV producers, swanning around Capri. He’s resentful of this. ‘and you can guess the rest’…
It really isn’t the sort of thing that’s worth caring about too much - his position in the song, I mean, not his lover’s idea of a good time.
But I can’t get past it. It’s the sort of thing that brings me down and I don’t know why.
Aww! You’re a really lovely person!
Yeah, I do see what you mean. I love where bitterness and absurdity meet in HMHB songs. But my absolute favourite tracks are the genuinely tender ones: For What Is Chatteris…, We Built This Village On A Trad. Arr. Tune 
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It’s Cliched to be Cynical at Christmas is my favourite. For reasons that might by now be obvious.
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Aye, it is a banger!
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Still very much enjoying this, far and away my favourite album this year. Further listening has revealed Terminus to be one of the greatest lyrics I’ve ever heard, so that’s nice. It’s like one of those modern poems you were forced to study at GCSE English, it’s that good.
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Really poignant stuff.
Full lyrics here for anyone interested
Camped out on a lower slope
Dog-tired at the toposcope
Hot soup in the aftermath
Salad days in many ways
Then time creeps up unseen
And it puts me back at the front of the bus
Hands I once held no longer there
Grey falls on the green
As I try and get used to ‘me’ and not ‘us’
Where I’m going I’m not sure that I care
Still thought I could play out wide
Felt sure I could stay onside
But stiff limbs and a shin which looks like
Inter’s end on derby day says
Time’s crept up unseen
And it’s stuck me back at the front of the bus
Bound who knows where
Free of charge
The situation’s lean
Though it could be worse
So I don’t make a fuss
Still evading capture
Still at large
Somebody’s mumbling Galatians
Somewhere a wolf-print fleece needs 90 degrees
Pushchair-related confrontations
Pastoral conceits, Italian fancies, comic glees
No stroll of a summer’s eve
Neck brace and a shower sleeve
Hot soup in the afterlife
I’ve got my fingers crossed, because
Old Father Time’s arrived
And he’s sat by me at the front of the bus
Here I am as there I was before
Things I hold dear
Held in place by means of a surgical truss
Sorry, not in service any more
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‘Blaby’s in leicestershire’ currently doing it for me.
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Starting to think it might be their best yet. Been hammering this and the ‘And Some Fell on Stony Ground’ compilation pretty much exclusively for the last month.
Really need to listen this. Love HMHB.
Probably as good a place as any to post this song:
I absolutely adore it.
“Her mate Natalie at the back pipes up with ‘Yeah, the windy minimalism of that last track recalls some of Labradford’s isolationist period”.
Stunning.
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Someone cleverer than me on the HMHB lyrics site pointed out how there are several opportunities for a rhyme with “terminus”, but we never get it. As the aforementioned clever person says “It’s almost as if the terminus is in sight but the narrator is not quite there yet…”
One of my favourites that.
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