Embrace 'All You Good Good People'

Chart Peak: 8 [original version: 157]
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Embrace are brothers Danny and Richard McNamara, Mike Heaton and Steven Firth... They have already charted this year with their Fireworks and One Big Family EPs and now look set for their biggest success to date with 'All You Good Good People'.

It must have been early 1997 when Longpigs played Lancaster Sugarhouse, probably the biggest act to play in the town while I was a student there. I didn't actually go, but I heard about the support band Embrace who were already being tipped as the next big thing, and had just released the original version of this song as a limited-edition 7" (of 1300 apparently, which I suppose was a small number of 7" singles in the late 90s) on Fierce Panda records. If I'd seen a copy I probably would have bought it, even though I hadn't heard the song. I was quite easily led then. I did indeed go on to buy the two more widely-distributed follow-ups without really thinking about whether I liked them, and so when this bigger-budget re-recording of the debut came out I bought that too, although I was in a slight quandry about which of the two CD formats to get, and I'm still not sure I chose the right one. With hindsight, the track is rather overlong and I should perhaps have bought the version with the shorter radio edit on it; unfortunately (and slightly surprisingly) it's the same six-minute version featured here.

You can tell what they were trying to do here, and it's much the same thing that Oasis were doing on the previous track; you can also see Danny McNamara practicing his Richard Ashcroft scowl in the video and indeed Embrace were signed to the Verve's label Hut. Of course, at the time when they were signed the actual Verve had split so this single already feels slightly overtaken by events, Top 10 hit though it was. If they'd released an album in late 1997 it would probably still have been pretty big - and to be honest, I would have bought one - but by the time a debut set finally did arrive in summer 1998 they had already lost a little of their momentum and I'd lost interest. This particular song was re-recorded again for the album, and that version has the more famous video where Danny McNamara is executed. The chorus is certainly memorable and the major-label versions benefit from better singing and a proper brass section instead of the cheap synthesised one on the indie release; but ultimately the song feels a bit hollow, trying too hard to be anthemic. I stopped buying their records at this point, although I did quite like their song 'Ashes' a few years later.

As for that gig I didn't go to, third on the bill were Travis, who of course ended up being the biggest of the three acts. Somebody who did go said Travis were "the new Kenickie" and I still don't know what he meant.

Also appearing on: Now 40, 41, 59, 63
Available on: All You Good Good People

Embrace 'Come Back To What You Know'

Chart Peak: 6

YouTube

The 31st of May 1998 was with hindsight a decidedly late date to be saying the last rites for Britpop, but it was the singles chart revealed on that day that finally made it evident to me and my brother that the game was up. In an interesting coincidence, it also includes the follow-up to the Natalie Imbruglia single in the last post, which sheds an interesting light on some of the oddities in chronology thrown up by Now! albums. Its most relevant feature, though, is the failure of several anticipated indie-oriented releases: the single that was expected to break Gorky's Zygotic Mynci into the Top 40 stiffing at 60, Kenickie's big airplay hit 'I Would Fix You' barely scraping the Top 40, a James song I actually liked only getting to 29 etc etc.

The one glaring exception was 'Come Back To What You Know' (yes I am finally going to mention the song this post is meant to be about!) which sailed straight in at 6, the highest-charting Embrace single at that time (it was only outdone in 2006). I had myself bought their three previous hits because it seemed to be what I was supposed to do, and I'd probably have bought the original 7" version of 'All You Good Good People' had I ever seen a copy. Yet I'd listened to each one with declining enthusiasm, and at some point in the six months before this single was released I'd turned on them severely, which perhaps made me the equivalent of somebody who's recently given up smoking. Self-referentially we used to joke about video, imagining they were all captured by some force and turned into zombies thinking "Must... buy... Embrace... record..." Looking at that chart it felt like a tide had turned somewhere and the nation had decided that listening to "alternative" music wasn't supposed to be fun ever again.

In fact, when I listen to it now, this record isn't quite as bad as it seemed at the time, and no worse than many other Embrace singles (it's certainly better than 'One Big Family') but it still suffers from a sense of more of the same: their determination to turn every song they wrote into a big fist-pumping anthem makes it seem inevitable that you'd get a bit tired of them by about the fourth single you heard, whichever one it actually was. It also contrasts uncomfortably with Danny McNamara's flat and rather charmless voice, which with hindsight might have worked well fronting a more humble-sounding band. It seems like I might not have been completely alone, either; whilst this single was clearly anything but a flop and the album went straight in at the top a couple of weeks later, there was a certain sense that they never became quite as big as they might have if they'd managed to release an album in the spring or sooner. And their one attempt to play against type with the 1999 comeback 'Hooligan' seems to have generated more confusion than momentum. It was pretty much downhill from here commercially until 2004, and I wasn't too sorry. My feelings have softened now and I realise I can't blame them entirely for the gulf that seemed to re-open between popular and "serious" music around this time, but I still can't really enjoy this. Nice string arrangement though.

Also appearing on: Now 38, 41, 59, 63
Available on: The Good Will Out