Labels: Boss Tuneage
Review by: MH
Part 2 of Elmerhassel’s discography which Boss Tuneage brought us last year. This half brings together their second LP, “John Wark”, with some tracks off 7inches and unreleased demo versions of other tracks – I think it’s great that they got the real John Wark to appear on the artwork of that album originally too by the way. Now obviously he was a big hero for them being Ipswich Town supporters and there’s actually an Ipswich Town football song on here which reels off the names and strengths of the team captained by Mick Mills – my Panini football sticker habit at school means that I recognise the majority of the players they run off. A demo version of the song appears towards the end of the CD just in case you can’t get enough of this particular corker. That song is really something of an oddity and in keeping with football pop songs but for the most part they deal in the sort of melodic punk that fit in well with Senseless Things and Mega City Four in those days. On the whole, this second half of their discography is a little more hit and miss for me than the other half that I reviewed a couple of months back and the best Elmerhassel tracks for me were on that one. I’m finding that the acoustic tracks on here don’t stand up to the test of time although I was pretty into that kind of thing in the 90s. However, “John Wark” is a pretty solid album and there are still enough good tunes on here like “Apologies & Explanations”, “Listen Up” and the demo version of “Any Cars Free” to make this worth your while if you can get behind that 90s UK melodic punk sound.