CD OF THE WEEK: The Streets: A Grand Don’t Come for Free
For decades now, artists with any sense have avoided concept albums. So you have to admire Mike Skinner’s guts. His follow-up to Original Pirate Material, his 2002 debut as The Streets, is undoubtedly a concept album.
A Grand Don’t Come for Free tells a story, complete with themes and characters. It opens with a melodramatic orchestral flourish, suggesting that what you are about to hear has great profundity and import. In fact, what you hear is a song about failing to return a rented DVD on time and having a cash machine refuse your card. It’s witty, cocky and self-deprecating, and it wins you over at a stroke.
Original Pirate Material introduced Skinner as a skilled lyricist with a novel idea: using hip-hop and garage to depict a mundane British suburban existence.
A Grand Don’t Come for Free raises the stakes to such an extent that it sounds literally unprecedented. It reveals Skinner’s eerie ability to manipulate the listener’s emotions: when the album ends, the immediate emotion you feel is not admiration or respect, but the overwhelming desire to ring Skinner up and suggest going for a pint.
It happens partly as a result of Skinner’s halting delivery: like a teenager forced against his will to read poetry aloud, he dutifully obeys rigid rhyme schemes and metres at the expense of natural rhythm. And he is blessed with a remarkable ear for everyday speech and an ability to capture universal experiences so acutely that you virtually end up nodding in recognition as you listen.
The whole album is so lyrically skilful and emotionally endearing that it allows Skinner to get away with murder at the finale. The much-vaunted plot ”twist” stretches your credulity to the limit: suffice to say that in order to believe it, you would also have to believe that Skinner is woefully unobservant. Given that he has just demonstrated that he is the most observant man in pop music, that’s a preposterously tall order. — Â