Echobelly

[RobB]

Well,Debbie should have a field day with this thread.

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You've probably frightened her off!

Echobelly caught my interest initially via lead singer Sonja Madan's capacity for a witty turn of phrase, both in her lyric writing and her interviews. She was an interesting writer, but vocally a bit too clean and sweet really. The band stood out a bit from the Britpop crowd in being multi-racial (something Debbie will no doubt roll her eyes at my mentioning, the media did tend to harp on it at the time), and in having a strong female presence. For my money they were a lot more interesting musically than other female-fronted bands of the era like Sleeper and the highly over-rated Elastica, the first album particularly was a joy. I think by the time their third album was released, I'd begun to lose interest in the Britpop scene due to my blossoming Radiohead obsession, so I never did get around to checking it out.

I was amazed to read on the 'net today that Sonja is still going under the Echobelly name! Still gigging and recording.

[d.a.walker]

I loved Echobelly!!!

I've got Lustra (album no.3) and People Are Expensive (album no.4).

Lustra is actually very very good, but bar The World Is Flat, not a singles album at all. The songs Angel B and Here Comes The Big Rush are among my all time favourite Echobelly songs.

People Are Expensive is also very very good but also a is a very different Echobelly, worth checking out alone for A Map Is Not A Territory.

[d.a.walker]

Echobelly - Here Comes The Big Rush

This was the theme tune to the start of many a drunken wild night out back in 1997, christ me and my mates used to start off on volcanos, which was simply red wine and vodka (hahaha and an E ), then hit the clubs, my god I've certainly mellowed since then!!!!

Anyway I love this song and it's a real shame nobody else did.

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"We're sorry this video is no longer available'
...along with all our misspent youths

[d.a.walker]

Oh sweet mother of bloody bugger! That is rather annoying!

[d.a.walker]

I've been rather immersed in Echobelly of late, particularly in On and People Are Expensive. I also managed to get a copy of the most recent album Gravity Pulls, which is rather gorgeous and lush, but bar the on the ball lyrics and Sonya, a very different band to their early stuff. On Gravity Pulls there are some beautiful tracks like Get Me Thru The Good Times and Strangely Drawn, however it's People Are Expensive that really seems to been their best body of work.

One of the biggest tragedies of the 'Brit-Pop/Riot Grrl' era is that some truly great bands got shafted by the genre tag. Salad, Puressence, Strangelove are examples of brilliant bands also enveloped and forgotten in it along with Echobelly. (incidentally Puressence put out a fabulous album last year called Don't Forget To Remember, well worth checking out...)

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Oh god, I adored both Salad and Strangelove. Totally underrated at the time, I remember getting really infuriated by the 'inferior Gene' tag that the UK press slapped on Strangelove, much as I loved Gene as well.

I'm kind of looking forward to the inevitable re-appraisal / reclaiming of that whole era of British music when it finally happens, there was such a lot of highly enjoyable music that came out of it and it deserves more serious critical recognition that it gets now. The attitude over the last few years seems to be to regard it as a kind of camp, jokey era that was more important for its cultural aspects than its music, but I think that's a bit of an injustice really.

[d.a.walker]

Strangelove were just magnificent, especially their first two albums. I still play Beautiful Alone at top volume!! Did you know that Patrick Duff, the singer from Strangelove, released a really good solo album on EMI back in 2005 called Luxury Problems. I only found out about it a couple of months ago so it must have got some superb promotion (not).

Salad I adore, especially the Ice Cream album, though Drink Me is damn good stuff too. Drink The Elixer is such a blast even now and Motorbike To Heaven I want played at my funeral!

Back to Echobelly, I've found a brilliant acoustic version of Natural Animal which is even better than the album version from On. They've also just updated their very minimal webpage in the last week with details of the new (and rather incomplete) best of album and news that they are working on new material for a 6th album!!!! Not that anyone really knew about the 5th one hehe...

BTW: If anyone has the b-side to Here Comes The Big Rush, I'd love to hear them!!