Released 11 November 1992
After reading Pitchfork’s preposterous but entertaining list of the top 50 Britpop albums of all time, I was inspired to dust off an old feature from this very site in which I listened to a classic album for the first time and then reviewed it. I published six editions of Do You Remember the First Time? back in 2020, covering artists from Pink Floyd to The Cure to Miles Davis. And then I stopped. Because I’m lazy. Anyway, here’s Back in Denim by Denim….
Lawrence Hayward, known mononymously as Lawrence, is best known for his work with influential English jangle pop band Felt. He is a musician’s musician. Enigmatic. Reclusive. Never troubled by mainstream success. In the ’90s, Lawrence moved away from Felt to form Denim – a more straightforward indie rock band closer to the glam rock of the ’70s than the jingle pop of the ’80s. Typically, the first Denim record came out just at the wrong time. Had it arrived when Suede released Coming Up and brought glam rock stomping back into the charts, it probably would have been a success. Alas, in 1992, nobody really cared.
The album kicks off with mission statement and title track ‘Back in Denim’. As with all of Lawrence’s compositions, it’s hard to know how sincere he is with the lyrics, but there is no denying that the song itself is a banger. ‘Fish and Chips’ is even better. Bubblegum guitar pop with some great guitar work. ‘Bubblehead’ combines subtle guitar licks and spongy synths, building to a killer chorus. It’s a great start to the album.
Then comes ‘Middle of the Road’, a tongue-in-cheek list of all the things Lawrence hates. It’s silly. It’s trite. It’s annoying. Naturally, it was the only song on the record released as a single (just in case things were threatening to become a little too commercial). ‘The Osmonds’ is similarly bizarre lyrically (the song veers into an abrupt attack on the IRA at one point) but it serves as a good microcosm of the whole record. With both song and album, Lawrence is both homaging and satirising ’70s pop music. In 1992. No wonder he never sold any bloody records.
After ‘I Saw the Glitter On Your Face’, a pretty breakup song that is perhaps the most sincere track on the album (although it’s impossible to know), the record closes out with another ’70s pastiche in the form of ‘American Rock’, then ‘Livin’ on the Streets’, a forgettable song that takes on an unfortunate prescience in light of Lawrence’s own bouts of homelessness later in life and ‘Here is My Song for Eurpoe’ – a gorgeous and impossibly catchy slice of indie guitar synth pop that is probably the album’s highlight.
I plan to go through all of the albums in that aforementioned Pitchfork list that I haven’t heard before and writing occasional accmpanying articles. This is a good start. This is Denim is a strange record but it’s also fascinating. One things for certain, however, it isn’t Britpop.