MP3: The Crocketts / Will You Still Care & Explain

First of all, it's stressville around here right now, so that explains why i'm not doing more updates. Oh and because i'm busy getting sunburn. Recieving my final degree result friday morning. Wish me luck.

Anyway my forgotten indie band of the evening are (or were) the rather great Crocketts. If you want some biography the only place to go to is this link, but if you haven't got the time for that, the Crocketts were a Welsh 'cow-punk' (their genre definition, not mine) band who signed to V2 in 1997 and split in around 2001. Between then they released two albums, the first called We May Be Skinny & Wirey and the second The Great Brain Robbery. Singles included Hello & Good Morning, Loved Ya Once, Flowergirl, James Dean-esque, Nintendo Fallacy EP, Host, On Something and 1939 Returning. The band had some great press (mostly for their live shows) but were dropped by V2 after a merger with E.M.I. (along with 22 other bands).

For me, the difference between something like this and, say, the Libertines is that its ramshackle but not shite. And thats quite an essential thing really, something many music papers (*cough, wink, nod*) seem to forget. And as writing that made me (and perhaps you) consider where the hell the world ramshackle came from, here's the etymology:

ramshackle
1830, back-formation from ramshackled, earlier ranshackled (1675), alteration of ransackled, pp. of ransackle (see ransack).

So not that interesting then. At least nothing about shackling rams, which i'm sure we all expected.

Anyway I saw the Crocketts supporting the Stereophonics at Southampton Guildhall back in....1999 I believe, and from what I remember they were indeed pretty fantastic. They managed to do in 20 minutes what took the Stereophonics about 2 and a half hours to do: to, you know, be really good. Except actually the 'Phonics' weren't that good. By the time of their third encore, I know myself and my friends were asking ourselves whether they actually had any more songs to play. This was when they had 2 albums, and were supposedly (as people will tell you) really really good. Well one or two singles followed by many piles of shite doesn't make you good i'm afraid, just lucky.

The two songs here are the Crocketts first single, Will You Still Care, which to me sounds like perfect festival fodder, a last song of the set styley Indie anthem (TM), but in a good way (i.e. not in an Embrace way). And that's not the good Embrace, for any clever Indie scenester types reading. So anyway, this songs clearly got a few rather shitty lyrics, but is still completely ace. From about 3:30 he's making absolutely no sense what-so-ever. but its still great. The second MP3 here is another single, Explain, and is taken from my very own 7" vinyl (I believe the b-side was a cover of Rhinestone Cowboy) and so comes with complimentary authentic clicks and pops. Another great song with a middle eight that sounds to me a hell of a lot like old Idlewild.

Anyway two members of The Crocketts went on to form the rather great Crimea, and as for the others, they're probably resigned to the same crazy post modest Indie success land that Cliff Jones and the singer from Terris are living. But hopefully not. Anyway I think i'm going delirious due to the pain of my sunburn so I'll just shut it and give you the song links. If you want more Crocketts info including mail order links for their records check out this rather great (and extensive) unofficial fansite. Enjoy.

Download: Will You Still Care - MP3 3.47mb (rapidshare)
Download: Explain - MP3 3.21mb (rapidshare)