Brilliant unappreciated album IV: Elastica

Band: Elastica
Album: Elastica
Year released: 1995
Year discovered: 1995
Year rediscovered: 2008

I've been a Brit rock man since 1997. But before I heard Blur, Suede, even Oasis, I heard Elastica. Through some bizarre quirk of fate, X96 played Connection and Stutter enough times that I heard them and wanted them. How did I know it was a great album? Well, one time my dad came down when I was playing Stutter loudly and he started carping about how drummers nowadays always just flail away on the cymbals. Parents complaining about it? Obvious winner.

I was not an intelligent music buyer in the 1990s. Case in point: I bought Sponge's Rotting Pinata. (How bad was Sponge? If you play Plowed for people now, they would probably say "I thought that was Stone Temple Pilots" which is, well, really not the best comparison for any band.) But Elastica was different. Different to the point that when I undertook my epic project of choosing the top three songs from each album to put on my legion of mix tapes, I had no idea which songs to select (ultimately, Stutter, Never Here, and Connection made the cut).

So, what makes the album great?

A) That cover. Such a stark, punky, awesomely rock and roll cover. One of my favorite covers of all time.

B) There were three girls in the band, they wore all black, and they wore Doc Martens. I was originally obsessed with the guitarist Donna Matthews and then became obsessed with the new bassist Sheila Chipperfield (which, I honestly think, was because I thought the last name Chipperfield was the coolest last name in the world). It was a foregone conclusion that I would end up marrying a dark-haired British girl who wore all black and Doc Martens. Simple, right? (You can imagine my surprise when I fell in love with a blonde American.)

C) The songs were melodic, short, and tough. Hit you quick, onto the next. 16 songs in 40 minutes. But no filler.

I'll admit, my ardor for the band waned as they took forever to make their follow-up album. I got off my mission, listened to it, and hated it. I held onto the first album for sentimental reasons...until I put it on my ipod in a bout of capriciousness. One bus ride home I got around to listening to it. And fell in love with it again. The other day I watched some old Glastonbury performances. Great again! And I came thisclose to trying to persuade Christina to throw away her current wardrobe and buy all black clothes and Doc Martens...