Mike Skinner is here to tell you about his life: by his own admission boring, sub-urban, and grey. His arrythmic, spoken-word cadence never wavers from these themes, but never fails to rise above, either. If a poet’s job is to find transcendence in the familiar, you’d be pressed to find a more able bard in music today.
If you’re under 35 and you’ve spent more than a month in the U.K. or Ireland in the last 15 years, the debut album from The Streets will probably produce a few smiles of recognition. If you’ve spent significant time in the Isles since the arrival of Acid House in 1988, this record will touch your heart and make you miss your friends. If you happen to be English and under 40, well, I hope you already own this. Someone’s made a record about your life, mate. You should really check it out.
And if you’re none of the above? American, college-aged, and into Built to Spill? Well, maybe Original Pirate Material isn’t for you. But you’re missing out. The truth is that American youth culture hasn’t produced this kind of universal document in more than 10 years (De La? Nirvana?), and it’s worth making the effort to understand what’s happened here. Awkward, unprofessional, at times an embarassing listen -- this is nothing less than a triumph of the common, that rare album that manages to connect an intensely personal vision with a universal set of experiences. It just might be the album you remember 2002 by.
That The Streets’ debut album got heard at all is enough to renew your faith in pop music’s much-lamented underground promotional railroad (indie labels/club play/non-commercial radio), proof that the death of the alternative might have been prematurely pronounced. The Streets were birthed into the public consciousness by Britain’s garage/2-step scene, but the skippy, R&B-garnish on debut single "Has it Come to This?" didn’t even begin to circumscribe Skinner’s vision, despite the ubiquity of its "You’re listening to the Streets ... Original pirate material ... A day in the life of a geezer" catchphrases.
Original Pirate Material is only a garage record in the way that Paul’s Boutique is a hip-hop record or Bringing It All Back Home is a folk record or the Mona Lisa is an oil painting. Skinner’s tapped into a medium, but he never lets it overwhelm the message or obscure the bigger picture in his head. And so "Let’s Push Things Forward" scorns the vacuity of the garrrrige overground, twisting its root sounds (Jamaican skank, rude bass) into an awkward anthem while Skinner makes his intentions clear. And he’s nothing if not determined: some of the music here is positively refusnik, and at times suffers for its individuality. (Compared to Royksopp’s beautiful, euphoric remix interpretation of the album’s best lyric, the version of "Weak Become Heroes" included here sounds like Skinner mumbling over a cassette deck with dying batteries.)
In the end, the occasional clunker of a non-tune or cringeworthy lyrical mug feels like part of the charm. Skinner offers no pretense to professionalism, no evident desire to do more than what made sense in his headphones and with his mates down the boozer. Perhaps it’s as simple as writing what you know, yet somehow the spirit of The Streets suggests there’s a lot more to it than that.
If you like The Streets, check out:
The Beastie Boys Paul's Boutique
De La Soul 3 Feet High and Rising
The Clash London Calling
The Stanton Warriors The Stanton Sessions
