Whenever a hyped British band comes to American soil, the instinctive Yank reaction is to recoil and hide from the latest Brit export. Sometimes this reaction is justified - especially when a Brit music tabloid brazenly asks if a band is better than the Beatles after just one single - but, every so often, there's a band whose debut album surpasses that hype. In 1997, that band is Mansun.
In an unbelievable move, EMI U.S. passed on the band, allowing them to join the Epic umbrella (in light of EMI's recent closings, think they might regret missing out on the group?). And the four piece calling themselves Mansun have whipped out an eleven song debut which brings to mind the kind of album that only graces our eyes once every couple of years.
Attack of the Grey Lantern opens with "The Chad Who Loved Me" (complete a nearly two minute instrumental beginning), with its tip of the hat to the John Barry scores in the James Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, which evolves into a more epic performance. This is just a prelude to the first American single, "Wide Open Space", which carries the same passion as Radiohead's "Creep". "She Makes My Nose Bleed" teases the listener with a "Supersonic" guitar to prove that yes, Mansun can rip off the Beatles just as well as Oasis before launching back into another Radiohead-like track.
Lead singer (and producer) Paul Draper, guitarist Dominic Chad, bassist Stove King and drummer Andy Rathbone wind up with an interesting combination landing somewhere between Radiohead and the Manic Street Preachers, but - in the tradition of great bands - blazing their own path at the same time. "Taxloss" sees Draper's voice nearing Suede's Brett Anderson as his bandmates tiptoe around the glam rock of Bowie and T-Rex, "Egg Shaped Fred" is a sing-along which could be the poppiest side of Nirvana, and "Mansun's Only Love Song" is a slower track which, while not a ballad in the true sense of the word, still stands out for its power.
On the American release of Attack of the Grey Lantern, "Take It Easy, Chicken" (the band's debut single) replaces the song of a transvestite priest, "Stripper Vicar". And, here, we can see Mansun paralleling the path of another truly band - the Smiths. Morrissey already talked about the vicar in a tutu, and Draper also speaks of the transvestite with nylons, heels and nails on the closing track "Dark Mavis" (which ends with a piece from "The Chad Who Loved Me". Just as Morrissey and Marr would ensure that each single release was the equivalent of a mini-album, and that B-sides weren't throwaways - but tracks to be heard - Mansun has taken similar steps to ensure their own form of bang for the buck. An incredible 32 tracks were recorded and released during 1996 in Mansun's native U.K., and included on the "flip-side" of their various singles. The only remote criticism here is that the album clocks in at only 11 songs and 55 minutes, while the band clearly had enough material for a much lengthier disc.
Through it all, Mansun show an unusual reverence towards the 80's bands of their youth. Although Draper proclaims that 'If I didn't think we could be bigger than R.E.M., I'd give up', he also states that 'We're the 90s ABC', while Andy Rathbone (at 24, the elder statesmen of the group) declares that 'The only other band I'd like to have been is in Duran Duran'.
Please, Mansun, don't sell yourself short. While Rio may have been entrancing to a worldwide gaggle of teenage girls (and will still strike a weak point in this critic's collection), this British group doesn't need a new video channel to capture the hearts of music lovers. And just like the debut albums The Smiths, The Stone Roses, the Manic Street Preachers' Generation Terrorists, Suede or Oasis' Definitely Maybe, this is - to lovers of British music - essential.
