Saturday, August 02, 2008

Embed and breakfast man: Sleeper

We did do a YouTube selection for Louise Wener ages ago, but that turns out to have been one link, to a video which has since been removed. And, since we fought passionately on the side of Sleeper in the 'it's not proper guitar music if you quite fancy the person singing' wars, it seems only right we should give the band a proper celebration.

There was always a slight disdain for the band; Louise was too opinionated; too pretty; the band were too poppy. All the things that, say, Suede were praised were seen as weak points for them. There was a nasty sense that indie kids didn't mind girls in bands, but not ones who actually wore skirts. It probably didn't help that the rest of the group weren't entirely memorable - hence Sleeperblokes - but how many members of Mega City Four could an average punter have supplied if required?

And were they really that dull? Jon Stewart wound up doing session work for KD Lang, which is a handy item to fling on your CD.

Louise has gone on to write books. Pretty good books. But it's music's loss.

Anyway, this is just too good to resist: Statuesque on the Tony Parsons fronted Big Mouth from the 30th April 1996:



Buy
Sleeper best-of although with only twothree proper albums, there isn't much to argue against buying those:
Smart
The It Girl
Pleased To Meet You - the existence of which I had totally forgotten about
Worldwide Adventures In Love - Wener's latest novel, published last month

More videos across the weekend
Nice Guy Eddie on Saturday Live
Inbetweener and What Do I Do Now live at the Top Of The Pops Weekend
Alice In Vain live, Glastonbury 1995
Click... Off... Gone live, TFI Friday, 1996
Louise Wener on TFI, Celebrity Poker & Shooting Stars
Delicious and Little Annie live, Glastonbury 1995


5 comments:

Olive said...


And were they really that dull? Jon Stewart wound up doing session work for KD Lang, which is a handy item to fling on your CD


I assume you mean 'CV'.
Interesting comment about Wener being a bit confusing for the indie kids- Sonja Madden from Echobelly had similar problems; I remember one letter in MM describing her as a 'ninja bitch' for having the temerity to throw some shapes in a pair of combat trousers for a photo shoot. Round about this time, of course, Lush gave up on their swirling, shimmering pop and decided to become Sleeper-lite, but Emma and (particularly) Miki were regarded as honorary blokes and avoided the disrespect meted out to Louise and Sonja.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your Sleeper week-end....looking forward to the rest...although you seem to have forgotten their third album "Pleased to Meet You" in your list at the end.

Simon Hayes Budgen said...

@Olive:
I think you're spot-on with the Miki from Lush observation - she did have an 'honorary bloke' status; curiously, Justine Frischmann seemed to get away with it, though.

@richard fruit-bat:
You're right, you know - I had totally forgotten the third album. Blimey.

Anonymous said...

I always thought it was because the tunes and lyrics just weren't that good. They got less stick than Menswear and were definitely ata similar level.

I remember the best description I ever heard being that everytime a Sleeper song starts you think: "That's really good", until the moment Louise starts singing. The second best was 'Lloyd Cole for the 90's'.

Simon Hayes Budgen said...

@anonymous
But the lyrics were great -

we should just get away until we make each other soar/
we should just get away until we make each other roar

is inspired, as both parts of the rhyme ends on a homonym, which means you can either hear it as a couplet about the transcendence of sex, or about shagging until it hurts. Or both.

And - pshaw! - you say Lloyd Cole like that's a bad thing...

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