Cracker have fought tooth and nail to get here. After a brief flirtation with chart success in the 90’s on the coattails of grunge, they endured wilderness years compounded by deep frustrations with their label, then after a less than amicable split they released an album of rerecorded favorites put out by new boss, Cooking Vinyl, thereby preempting a ‘best of’ planned by their former label – which must have felt pretty darned good.
We all know that a battered and battle-scarred band has a good chance of having something interesting to say – and this proves to be the case with ‘Greenland’, even if its not strictly obvious from the first four tracks.
From ‘Something You Ain’t Got’ to ‘Fluffy Lucy’ we’re in the company of Tom Petty outtakes; leaden, county-rock-grunge-type numbers that lumber and sprawl and make the heart sink. David Lowery’s Geldof growl recites rather than sings the lyrics, disengaging with the music and allowing into the performance a loose and impractical diffidence. It’s as if Lowery is curator of his own (often beautiful) lyrics and wants to keep them separate from the rough and tumble of the music.
However, the aptly named ‘Gimme One More Chance’ provides the fuck-it-let’s-do-it moment we’ve been waiting for, as if their new found freedom has just hit them. Amps are turned up to eleven and a pretty sexy guitar riff becomes the main melody line, funky and purring. Cracker’s mojo has returned intact and this point the album becomes a much more textured and inspired beast. On ‘Sidi Ifni’ the Pink Floyd guitar solos shimmer and echo; cymbal-assisted crescendos peak and crash, heartbeats pulse and die – and all this snaking around one of Lowery’s most evocative and poetic lyrics:
‘I drink gin with the old ex-pats/ We are broken things from a broken past/And it comes near but just out of grasp/The alchemist words that would bring her back’
There’s an authentic grunge feel to the album, shot through with more reflective moments – the sound of a band reaching middle age in a way – still rocking but with a depth, an assimilation of memories and regrets and the ever present Cracker sense of self-effacing humour.
At this point all Cracker’s journeys begin to make sense: the fights and silences weren’t setbacks, they were just things they had to get through to get themselves to Greenland – and it sounds like a pretty good place to be.