Echobelly – Everyone’s Got One/On: Extended Editions
- Written by Rosie Duffield
It’s startling to think that Britpop has reached its twentieth birthday. As with all music, there are songs and albums that are throwaways and others that are classics; those bands that, over the years have been forgotten while others have aged rather well. Echobelly are a band from the latter category.
In these extended editions – to mark the twentieth anniversary of their debut Everyone’s Got One – you find B-sides, live material (including sessions with Steve Lamacq and John Peel) and plenty of previously unreleased stuff. It’s a real treat.
I think I was slightly ahead of my time when it came to Britpop – when EGO was released in 1994, I was still at primary school; a music geek obsessed with Blur, Oasis and Elastica, and looked strangely upon by friends for not liking Take That and Mariah Carey as they did.
Twenty years on, and I still can’t understand why they didn’t see what I saw. These albums take me back to that heady and exciting time when British music came to the forefront, and really celebrated the talent we had to rival our American counterparts. Echobelly did that with style. Sonya Madan’s distinct vocals led the band through a variety of subjects including prostitution (‘King of the Kerb), race and gender issues (‘Call Me Names’ and ‘Give Her A Gun’). In the new sleeve-notes which accompany the re-issue, Madan suggests that she was more or less blagging her way through the whirlwind of success that came the band’s way during the early to mid-nineties; yet if the song writing is anything to go by, she held her own – and if the bonus session tracks are anything to go by, she never had anything to worry about. Listening to the CD, the songs segue from studio to session recording seamlessly – I didn’t even notice on first listen.
ON was Echobelly’s second, and arguably, best album. Released in 1995 it carried the major singles most people remember them for: the exuberant ‘Great Things’, the moody but dreamlike ‘Dark Therapy’ - and the aforementioned, and incredibly catchy - ‘King of the Kerb’. The extended edition comes with an impressive 41 tracks – including a set from their Wetlands gig in New York in the same year.
In addition, both CDs feature unseen and rare photographs from the band’s heyday. The joy of finding song lyrics within the inlay was something that couldn’t help but bring a smile to my face – if anything, it’s that that takes me back to my youth rather than the music. But the music here speaks for itself. These extended albums are a well put together collection of the best of Echobelly’s music and memorabilia and it’ll certainly delight fans. For those less familiar with the band, it’s an education into the Britpop era away from the more popular groups like Suede, Blur and Oasis, who seemed to spend more time in the newspapers than in the studio (regardless of musical talent).
Everyone’s Got One and ON: Extended Edition(s) are a brilliant slice of guitar-driven indie rock from a period where British bands reigned high. Listen to these albums, enjoy the bonus material, and revel in a bit of musical history.