“All of our songs sound the same” sings Nigel Blackwell in the coda of ‘Lord Hereford’s Knob’, proving the theory by following this with choruses from ‘Keeping Two Chevrons Apart’ and ‘(You’re The Reason Why) Paradise Lost’.
There’s some truth in this but the point is surely the question how the band have managed to keep the fertile stream of puns, streams of consciousness and general random epherema stretching over the past 20 years. On CSI, the self-effacing castigation of their tune-writing ability isn’t completely on the mark – ‘Took Problem Chimp to Ideal Home Show’ is a curious mix of folk, the Pixies and some obscure form of techno Blackwell probably discovered in one of his periods of ‘research’ i.e. scanning the telly for strange new facets of the human condition. And closer ‘National Shite Day’, while a ‘Country Practice’-like “Irked of Birkenhead”-style rant about, well, everything, is still musically another piece of genius, though the guitar hook is played off-key in some bizarre attempt to ensure that the band can never be accused of being commercial. Everyone knows that this appetite for commercial self-destruction existed many moons ago, their refusal to play on The Tube the stuff of legend, but had the Biscuits become world-striding megastars then their unique view on the trivia of everyday life – ‘Bad Losers on Yahoo Chess’, ‘Blue Badge Abusers’ – would have been replaced with observations on the coke habits of Hollywood superstars and shenanigans at the Monte Carlo Casino. Despite the occasional ‘strangely familiar’ tune in their canon, HMHB are still the voice of our generation.
