Why Elastica Matters

A reappraisal of Britpop's forgotten masterpiece

Elastica’s eponymous debut turns 27 this year. It’s one of my favourite albums of all time, and it sold incredibly well (it was one of the fastest selling debuts ever in the UK at the time, second only to Oasis’ Definitely Maybe). However, in nearly every critical examination of Britpop’s musical output since the 90s, the record is conspicuously absent, touched on only in relation to frontwoman Justine Frischmann’s relationships. I think it’s time for a reappraisal of Elastica – for me, it’s one of the most iconic and definitive relics of the 90s, and it serves as an alternative to the skeezy, embarrassing excess of Britpop.

Britpop: a scene built on football, misguided national pride, and a nasty tendency towards laddish misogyny. A scene which Frischmann influenced from the very start, through her involvement with bands such as Suede and Blur. Elastica takes Britpop and fucks with it, inverts and perverts the ideology and spits out 15 short, sharp classics. And it stands outs from its peers. Where Blur is kitsch, Elastica is dirty. Oasis’ snarling laddishness gets ripped to shreds and rebuilt into gravelly street-smart coolness. Suede’s woeful melodrama is sneered at with punchy hits, always smirking, always self-aware. Elastica matters because it lets you be one of the boys, but it laughs at their excesses, and it never, ever, sells out. Country House, eat your heart out.

The album opens with the snappy, sharp ‘Line Up’, complete with gagging and harsh, unforgiving guitar chops. It rejects the fan culture, idolisation and herd mentality that the Britpop machine fed on, but is nonetheless keenly aware of the exploitation of the world’s “drivel heads”, or groupies, at the hands of shitty male bands and industry moguls.  Short, snappy songs like ‘Vaseline’ inject the album with bursts of energy and fun, while longer tracks like ‘Hold Me Now’, ‘Never Here’, and ‘Waking Up’ show off the group’s proficiency as hit-makers. You get the sense, listening to the album in full, that nearly any of the songs featured on it could have been released as singles.

One thing that Elastica does well is that it deals unapologetically with female sexuality: the lyrics carry swagger and confidence in a manner usually reserved for male musicians. The braggadocio is cool, though, restrained and unindulgent in a way that mocks the cockiness of bands like the Happy Mondays and Oasis. The smirk behind Justine’s voice, for example, in ‘Stutter’, is palpable. Never has a better song been written about erectile dysfunction. It’s a thinly veiled call out for her boyfriend’s inattentiveness and infidelity, made more obvious by the video, in which a prone, Albarn-lookalike lays passed out on the bed behind Frischmann as she sings coldly into the camera. It’s not a whingey song though – the playfulness of the band in the video, wandering around London and pissing about, has a real sense of fun and camaraderie, offsetting any sense of hate that might be found otherwise. ‘Annie’ has the same sense of playful friendship; a short and sweet number about getting fucked up in seaside towns has all the material of the perfect Britpop song, but sounds punk as hell.

‘Car Song’ is dirty, confident yet bored; a simple song about getting it on in a car. Its video, however, completely subverts expectations – a Ghostbusters-esque car chase, almost completely unrelated to the song’s lyrics. In a similar way to ‘Connection’, if you read through the comments on YouTube, you’ll find little reference to the song’s merits; instead, the comment sections are made up mostly of remarks on the girls’ appearances. ‘Connection’ also suffers from comments referring to the plagiarism case which was fought against it; the catchy opening riff, played on synthesizer and later electric guitar, is actually a riff taken from a Wire song. Frischmann and the rest of the band never denied these claims, making the valid point that all pop music is recycled, and viewing their reimagining of the riff as an homage rather than plagiarism. ‘Connection’ is far more than its riff anyway; although it lends the song its acidity and driving rhythm, the track’s arrangement is what expands and shapes it. Its lyrics, too, are impressive- simple, repetitive, yet undeniably catchy. I’m not sure if its about getting famous or getting fucked, but either way it’s the perfect Britpop hit.

There are sad songs on the album too, although it generally retains that punky, sharp sound. ‘Smile’, a heart-breaking song about dealing with a partner’s infidelity and substance abuse, is brutally honest and strangely mature, and sonically retains that sense of rock and roll. The song’s lyrical vulnerability is easy to miss, given the pounding drums and throbbing bass; it’s a song to dance to rather than cry. Elastica has a tendency to do this, to mask deeply personal and vulnerable feelings with punchy, energetic instrumentation. It’s not that the album doesn’t take itself seriously, nor that the band are afraid to explore these feelings. It simply deals with them the way most young people do: by making a lot of noise. ‘S.O.F.T.’, for example, which guitarist Donna Matthews claims stands for “same old fucking thing”, discusses excess and addiction, and has possibly the heaviest riffs on the album. ‘2:1’ deals with similar subject matter, and featured on the soundtrack to Trainspotting; it’s a take on a tango, and hums with a sense of restrained desperation. Elastica shows that emotional vulnerability doesn’t have to be soft; it can be jagged, ugly, and loud.

I think what makes Elastica stand out is that, while it deals with the subject matter that defined Britpop – getting fucked up, excess, fame, trips to the seaside, infidelity, cars, booze, drugs, fags, tea, sex – it does so in a way that is sonically completely unique in the scene, and with a maturity which allows it to be mocking and critical, and effortlessly cool. It’s a rallying cry from the underground, and claws out a place among its contemporaries for those disillusioned by the laddish excess and shallowness which dominated the British charts in the 90s.