9. Mum & DadMum & Dad
This is one of my favourite albums of the past 20 years, it’s a masterpiece. I met the band before they put this album out, we became pretty good mates, we bonded over a shared love for the band World Of Twist. Joe Robinson from Mum & Dad produced one of my early Kings Have Long Arms singles entitled ‘Pigeons Carry My News’. He more significantly produced Badly Drawn Boys’ Mercury Prize-winning album, The Hour Of Bewilderbeast, which I quite liked at the time.
I remember Ian Rainford from the band did me a cassette of the Mum & Dad album before it came out. It knocked my socks off. I described it to him as sounding like "the end of the world, but the start of a new one". Now, if you look at the run-out groove on the vinyl of the record, the band have etched my quote on to it. Admittedly, the record is a lot better than the quote [laughs].
It really is an outstanding, almost lost great record. A great live band too, my favourite gig was when they supported Badly Drawn Boy (around the time he was doing the soundtrack for bloody About A Boy) at the Apollo in Manchester. I think the band had all dropped acid before going on stage, they sounded like a really bad tempered Hawkwind via White Noise, fucking brilliant and malevolent. Clair Pearson, the singer, got so pissed off with the two thousand unappreciative, non-committal Badly Drawn Boy fans waiting to hear songs from About A Boy, that she just told them mid-set to "go and fuck yourselves, I’m wasting my time here", threw her mic to the floor, flicked the Vs and walked off. It was hilarious and the correct thing to do when given such a prestigious opportunity [laughs]. I went to the set of Coronation Street with Clair about a month ago, I proposed to her outside Dev’s shop. There were audible gasps from other visitors, as I sank to my knees… I didn’t mean it, I was acting [laughs].
