ONE fine morning in 1995, Merseyside band The Boo Radleys set their alarms for the heart of pop, and the world was suddenly roused by the happy trumpet refrain of Wake Up Boo! After five years of creating wilfully obtuse, psychedelic indie pop, guitarist and songwriter Martin Carr thought he might like to try another flavour, something a little different, a little more accessible, just to see what would happen ...
Not that the music of The Boo Radleys needed any kind of radical overhaul. From their earliest album, Ichabod and I, the Liverpool four piece had thrived on their "otherness", fitting into the music scene of the time like swirly, spiral pegs in a somewhat square, indie-centric hole. As the 1990s began, the old order of The Wonder Stuff and Ned's Atomic Dustbin was being pushed aside by a new, vibrant UK pop movement, kickstarted by bands like Blur and The Stone Roses, until it gathered enough momentum to be named Britpop.
With their weird turn of musical phrase and strong Beatles influences, The Boo Radleys could easily have pushed their way to the vanguard, taking their rightful place at the forefront of Britpop, but instead they released albums like Everything's Alright Forever and Giant Steps, records which required more than a superficial baggy front to be fully appreciated.
Not for Martin Carr the straightforward song structure: Boo tunes went down some very strange paths, and sometimes didn't even bother to come back. Songs like Spaniard, Skyscraper, Lazarus and I Hang Suspended were songs for a science fiction pop chart, where aliens play warped melodies on convoluted contraptions, and the singer looks like Captain Picard on acid. Discerning punters voted Giant Steps the best album of 1994, but the more stubborn of us refused to be sucked into The Boo Radleys's psychedelic vortex. We simply shut our ears, looked at our watches and waited for the second coming of The Stone Roses.
Then the wake up call came out of the blue. As spring dawned on what would become the hottest year in recent memory, the Boo Radleys's sun drenched anthem bounced into the charts at No. 9, heralding the beginning of a mini summer of love, for which their fourth album, Wake Up!, would become the soundtrack, and just in case anyone was still dozing, the album entered the charts at No. 1, landing like a splash of water on a sleeping crustie's face.
But now that The Boo Radleys had got everybody out of bed, their hard day's journey into night was about to begin. The flashy fanfare of trumpets which sounded so fresh and new on songs like Find The Answer Within and It's Lulu would soon start to tarnish, as The Boo Radleys found themselves clocking into the pop star game, playing the chirpy Liverpudlian lads who like nothing better than to sing a happy morning ditty while the sun shines.
By the end of 1995, it was hard to tell if The Boo Radleys were a rock band or just a bunch of jolly Scouse milkmen.
And so Martian Car having dabbled in the devil's stew of pop stardom, decided it was time to get off the middle of the road before another bandwagon came along and turned The Boo Radleys and their horn section into roadkill. And not a moment too soon, because most of us were so sick of hearing Wake Up Boo! that we wanted to smash the band's strawberry flavoured alarm clock into a very deep river.
It was time to get back to the original plan, i.e. to make interesting, experimental music with a sonic horizon well beyond the safe parameters of pop. It was time to reopen Carr's Pandora's box of off kilter ideas and off the wall influences, and turn it loose on a bemused world.
What's In The Box? was the opening gambit in the band's bid to regain their somewhat cracked credibility, and the fourth album, C'Mon Kids, was a persuasive collection of superb, guitar crashing tunes and weirdcore anthems, a rallying call to any young people who might feel alienated from the Oasis herd. Songs like Get On The Bus, Meltin's Worm and Bullfrog Green were sparse on arrangements, but densely packed with ideas. Gone was the parping horn section, and back to the front of the mix was Martin Carr's coiled, crunching guitar. Singer Sice was less softly spoken, and the edge in his voice was matched by the tough, solid backing of Tim Brown and Rob Cieka.
Compared to Wake Up Boo!, this new album is a bit of a commercial stiff, but Martin Carr is still happy with the move back to Leftfield.
"I think we sound more like a band than we've ever done before," says Carr. "We never sounded to me like we were a band playing together, and this time we did. It just seems really simple, a really, really simple. album. I think it's a lot simpler than the last one. Very basic sounds, no orchestration, no trumpets. That's probably why it sounds more like us cos we're not relying on outside instruments or musicians.
