This album is a decade late and doesn’t care. Like a lairy gatecrasher to a low key party it swaggers up with its 90’s Madchester vibe and proceeds to get drunk before passing out in the middle of the front room.
Big Arm are the Missing Link between the Stereo MC’s and Hard Fi – Paul Ryder, co-founder of The Happy Mondays has fashioned a noughties equivalent to his own Mondays, to Flowered Up, Black Grape and all the other lovably roguish indie dance bands of the previous decade. He’s created a Soup Dragons with stubble; catchy, poppy and moderately synthed up but with a bit of muscle behind it all, too. The album, Radiator starts as it means to go on, with Flashbacks and its sneery vocals, catchy Neanderthal guitar riffs and brass sections like 70’s kids’ TV themes – all in all, pretty much irresistible.
‘Into You Now’, ‘Get Back’ and ‘Ska 3000’ continue the guitar-dance vibe while ‘Love Is’ throws in some deadpan rap. Electraglide is slightly more chilled with some jazzy Rhodes keyboards, ‘Sunrays’ is a local chancer makes good anthem:
“Got a suitcase full of dough/ Not sure where to go”
and ‘Welcome’ is just downright poppy.
It can seem a bit samey, however, and if you don’t like their singles ‘Flashbacks’ and ‘Sunrays’ then there isn’t going to be anything else here for you. However, its charm is that you know they don’t much care what you think. Big Arm are all guitar-riff and synth squelch, Big choruses and laddish antics, and as long as you don’t spill their pint, they seem like pretty sound company.
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