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Early

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Scritti Politti

 
Early
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Avg: 4.0 (40 ratings)

To call this the “thinking person’s” post-punk would be an understatement.

  • We Say...

    Review by Chris Roberts

    “It’s been a long, long time since I heard this stuff,” writes Green Gartside in his almost comically modest sleeve-notes to this collection of first generation (late '70s-early '80s) Scritti Politti. “It sounds like some anti-produced labour of negativity…structurally unsound and exposed.” He adds that it’s more about “questions” than “assurances.” Based in a tiny Camden squat, he, with Nial Jinks and Tom Morley, was then as much interested in Marxism as in music. Scritti began as an exercise in theory, pulling apart pop’s veneer of clichés and genres until the guts were revealed. To call it “thinking person’s” post-punk would be an understatement.

    1978 debut EP Skank Bloc Bologna deconstructed itself — with the level of earnestness only generally exhibited by brainy, freshly-educated young men — to within an inch of extinguishing its own charm. Yet its no-budget, do-it-yourself reggae-lite retains a unique charm. Other titles like “Messthetics” and “Bibbly-O-Tek” tell you much about their preoccupations: a mile away from punk’s hissing, spitting wrath, Derrida-quoting Scritti set out to warp the system by use of confusion and distraction.

    As the '80s dawned, and the more accessible breakthrough album Songs to Remember glided onto the horizon, the watershed moment was the legendary, still-beautiful “The “Sweetest Girl”,” its self-conscious quotation marks transcended by revelatory soulful vocals and Robert Wyatt’s poignant piano. The less-heralded “Lions After Slumber,” also here, is even better: a cascade of lyrical flow over a snow-white new form of funk. Scritti were bound to make their mark: this tense, tantalising set gathers their first cave-wall scratchings.

  • They Say...

    Review by Andy Kellman, All Music Guide

    The U.S. misunderstood a lot of foreign bands during the '70s and '80s. Ask fans of Gang of "I Love a Man in a Uniform" Four or pre-stadium Simple Minds, and they'll be happy to bitterly confirm it. Ask the average music fan who came of age during Scritti Politti's mainstream peak and he or she is likely to recall a one-hit wonder (wrong), a Color Me Badd precursor that appeared out of thin air (wrong again and yet again). Cupid & Psyche 85's end-to-end brilliance is another argument, but when that album was on the charts, few stateside listeners knew that Scritti Politti had a history. Several years before "Perfect Way," Scritti were post-punks who made frail political songs with guitars as linear as a balled-up entanglement of holiday lights, a rhythm section as slantwise as it was dubwise, and boyish vocals as sweet as they were hesitant. Though the voice of central member Green Gartside would eventually lose the latter characteristic, it seems to have remained a part of his personality. This disc, a compilation of his group's first four singles/EPs, wouldn't exist if he hadn't been badgered so much. Reading his liner notes that double as a disclaimer, it's not hard to understand why, because he's not off base when he says, "It sounds like some anti-produced labour of negativity, kind of structurally unsound and exposed, by design and default." However, it's these factors that help make the songs unpredictable, exciting, and ultimately thrilling -- hear the lazy lurch and hypnotic spirals in "Skank Bloc Bologna," the barely controlled tangents and tempo shifts in "Is and Ought the Western World," and all the retractions and stammering in "Messthetics," all seemingly happenstance works of sloppy borderline genius. "Hegemony," just as crucial, begins as a sprightly love song to a woman with an exotic name ("The fairest creature that ever I have seen") before turning into a seething rant against, well, hegemony ("You are the foulest creature that set apart a race"). It's not all leftist ideals and prone seams, though, with the inclusion of "The Sweetest Girl" and "Lions After Slumber," two glorious nudges toward the bright-eyed soul that was bubbling under the whole time. The sound of the recordings, mastered from vinyl, is vibrant enough to trick listeners into thinking that the masters were never "lost."

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