Lost Classics II: The Music - The Music

Briefly, at the start of the 21st Century, a handful of British bands threatened to throw off the shackles of Britpop and emerge as heirs to the thrones recently vacated by Blur, Oasis, Suede and Pulp.

Starsailor, Turin Brakes, Alfie and The Cooper Temple Clause were all bestowed with the tag of "the next big thing". And, for one reason or another, none truly ascended to the level which had been predicted of them.

Amongst those bands were The Music. Four teenage upstarts from Leeds, their sound was a mix of The Stone Roses' early guitar somersaults, heavy beats and Robert Harvey's high-pitched rock howl.

All 1,000 copies of the band's vinyl-only debut single Take The Long Road and Walk It sold out almost instantly. The song encapsulated The Music's sound in one five-minute burst: one scintillating guitar riff backed by a disco beat and Harvey's screaming, barely-decipherable vocal.

The single was followed by the You Might As Well Try To Fuck Me EP and The People EP, both of which suggested that a classic debut album was in the offing.

But, when debut album The Music arrived, it was distinctly underwhelming. (As an aside, is it strictly true that if an album has no title, it is simply given the name of the band that recorded it? Or should it just remain untitled and be referred to as "the band's debut album"?)

The first disappointment was in the track listing. Neither You Might As Well Try To Fuck Me - a great, rollocking, rock'n'roll tune - nor electronic masterpiece Karma was included on the record - a terrible oversight on both counts.

But the biggest travesty was in the production. Live, The Music are powerful performers, the rhythm section to the fore and Harvey breakdancing and bodypopping between lines. However, on the album, the production is muddy and fails to bring any of these aspects to the fore.

Listening to the album on the way into work this morning, I had to crank the car stereo up way beyond its normal setting just to hear what was happening. On a record that could have had a huge aural impact, that's inexcusable.

Setting aside the production gripes, the quality in the songwriting is plain to hear. An inferior, re-recorded version of Take The Long Road and Walk It is included, with the closing slide guitar refrain masked by unnecessary layers of guitar. The track follows opener The Dance, which stands as one of the record's strongest moments. Glacier-like walls of guitar open, to be joined by a Harvey mantra and delicate cymbal taps. Then, almost a minute in, the bass thunders in and the band is off at a gallop. Of all the tracks on the album, it is The Dance that is most reminiscent of The Stone Roses, and it is the track on which the band sounds most confident.

Elsewhere, there are hints at what the record could have amounted to in different hands. Human, which follows Take The Long Road and Walk It, fails to properly test the band's strengths, relying on guitarist Adam Nutter's best John Squire impression to carry a weaker than expected Harvey vocal.

Stand out track from the record is The Truth Is No Words, a furious bass groove combined with Harvey's most absorbing vocal. And it is on moments like these that it becomes most apparent that poor production severely limited what should have stood as a landmark record.

Part of the record's problem is that the band sometimes can't seem to decide whether they want to write a dance record, a rock record or an acoustic record. When they weld the guitar histrionics to the disco beats, such as on Float, The People or Getaway, they are peerless. When settling into a slower-paced ballad such as on Turn Out The Light, they fail to capture the imagination.

As it opens, Disco could almost be vintage Black Sabbath, so towering is its riff and assured its vocal. Two minutes in, the band accelerates into a Led Zeppelin rock storm and Harvey is given free reign to indulge his inner rock god. But, instead of using the track to close what could have been an outstanding record, the band follows it with the ponderous Too High.

Whilst Elastica's The Menace could never have been considered a classic by any stretch of the imagination, The Music's debut record should have been. The strength and tightness of the band and the quality of their songwriting could have seen them elevated immediately to the rock'n'roll A-list, their debut sitting comfortably alongside Definitely Maybe, The Stone Roses and A Storm In Heaven.

Instead, it merely hints at what might have been.