Today’s Great Britpop Song comes from Elastica. At first I only knew this group as “that band whose singer is Damon Albarn‘s girlfriend”, but after hearing them on the excellent ‘True Brit’ compilation from 1996, as well as on the ‘Trainspotting’ soundtrack, I decided to rent out a copy of their self titled debut from the local library. In fact, for a while it was rumoured that Albarn wrote many of the tracks on that album, which was of course a lie. However he does appear on the LP playing keyboards, and is credited as ‘Dan Abnormal’. A jagged but tuneful mixture of post-punk fuelled earworms, it was always going to be difficult for them to follow their brilliant first album, which at the time was the fastest selling debut ever. Five years on, and with Britpop a thing of the past the group returned to a very different musical climate that wasn’t very accepting, and the long-awaited second LP ‘The Menace’ flopped. It’s doubtful we’ll ever see this lot back on the same stage again, but for those who remain unaware of their brilliance there is always time to explore their superb work. Here is the classic ‘Line Up’, which was their second single, released in 1994. It spent three weeks on the UK Singles Chart, peaking at #20 on 12 February 1994 and earning them their first chart entry.
