If there was a competition for the least Google-friendly name in history, A would score pretty highly. Back in 1993, it wouldn’t have been a problem but subsequently searching for ‘A Band’ proved futile. So what happened? It went like this; Back in 2002 there was a rock band called A and they hit big with their third album ‘Hi-Fi Serious’, propelled by the incredible single ‘Nothing’. They were invited onto the main stages at festivals, then they released the awesome standalone single ‘Good Time’. In 2005 they released their strongest record to date ‘Teen Dance Ordnance’. And no one bought it. Ironically their final song ‘Wisdom’ left off with the line “waiting for you…”
After sporadically touring as a ‘hobby’, that wait is over. They have finally followed it up with ‘Prang’. After such a long time, it’s hard to know what to expect. Listen back to those big singles, and they show the band at their most straightforward. Most of their discography is weirder. Some consider them a pop punk band, but their music has little in common with Green Day or Blink-182. It’s a distinctive sound that leans more toward rock, but their songs don’t follow a template. Each feels different yet is clearly the work of the same band. ‘Prang’ shares these features, in effect it sounds exactly like a record made by A after a 20-odd year break, which is both its strength and weakness.
Broadly, the difference between this record and those from their heyday is it is being released by Cooking Vinyl and not a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. There is no pressure to write a huge chart-topping banger, so they haven’t. Instead, the songs lean in different, more interesting directions. It means the album is stranger than you might expect, taking longer to settle into, but it’s also comfortably the band’s most consistent record. In essence, it’s confident, unfiltered and delightfully weird.
Way back in the ‘Hi-fi Serious’ days, the band’s guitarist Marc Chapman appeared in Total Guitar Magazine. The article discussed his left-handed playing style and love for guitar solos. Here you can hear those skills being put to good use. While there is plenty of showing off, like the louche guitar solo on ‘Shit Summer’ or the wicked fretwork on ‘Kings Of Lowestoft’, mostly he’s writing interesting, thoughtful parts. Notably there’s a great interpretation of the classic ‘I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll’ on ‘All In’ which deploys the lick like an offensive weapon. Similarly, the hard sound that opens ‘Hello Sunshine’ has teeth but it chews rather than bites. The whole record is like this, in effect, tasteful.
That said the sound is surprisingly punk, featuring a rough, anything-goes edge that a lot of pop punk doesn’t. It’s most obvious on the delightfully rowdy ‘Techno Viking’ but even the more rocky ‘Back To The Shop’ feels nicely dangerous. Similarly ‘Walkover’ has a fast sway, driven by the snapping drumbeat.
The most notable thing, and perhaps shines a light on what it is that makes A so distinctive, is that the songs refuse to stay in one shape. This is a double edged sword. The band’s biggest hits are relatively straightforward and delight in repetition. Here they avoid that. Giles Perry’s keyboards are quite often used to give the songs a strange vibe or transition the song to a different space. In the case of ‘Bring On The Likes‘ it’s an awe-inspiring shift.
Jason Perry remains an ideal frontman. He’s armed with a distinctive voice that sounds unique, no matter how he expresses himself, along with a wicked sense of humour, a distaste for simple song structures and a restless creative energy. Throughout the record he favours a slacker vocal that is a mixture of singing, spoken word and melody. It’s tamed by age, but also bubbling with enthusiasm there is a cheekiness and a defined sense of humour. After the band’s initial run he worked as a professional songwriter, producing Grammy winning records, which might explain why this record sound so good. It’s biting and bassy but with a pleasing depth so that through decent headphones you can feel its rich tone.
Where once Jason Perry mocked old people as “losers” for not being able to use computers, here he’s cast as an old person himself struggling with the online world. It’s a canny choice and tells you a lot about his state of mind, although not quite as much as the discussion of mental health and struggling with cancer on the aptly named ‘Shit Summer’.
‘Bring On The Likes’ feels very much like a companion piece to their 1999 single ‘Old Folks’. It’s a stunning, spoken word, almost stream of conscious song. Indeed, Perry uses this approach on numerous tracks, it’s curious approach and defines the record’s entire feel. Often, he makes strange choices work counter to you’d expect, given the music. Take songs like ‘Back To The Shop’ which have a real “why would you use that as a chorus” vibe. It’s a common theme, a mismatch between what Jason Perry is doing and what you might expect. This is unusual and ultimately robs the album of a couple of straight-up classics, and yet, it gives the songs a strong character. This simply couldn’t be another record by another band.
‘Comment Leaver’ is sung from the perspective of a Daily Mail reader and is a barbed disassembly of that type of person. It also requires him to sing “I’m a little racist” which is a choice. Indeed this is a record full of interesting creative decisions, strong song writing and a talent that has aged like a fine wine.
‘Prang’ lacks a big, simple single to really grab you by both ears but it’s easily A’s most consistent album. It’s a record about finding humour in the passage of time, about having fun and keeping the spark alive. It’s about joy, it’s about love and if we ain’t got that then we ain’t got much and we ain’t got nothing, nothing.
IAN KENWORTHY