40 Mumbles: In the Pocket of Big Sad

I’m kind of sick of this self-obsessed white guy indie-emo thing where this kind of mundane shit you pretend’s got any symbolism, or greater important to other people’s lives, rather than just some fucking tedious self-involved nothing

Poached Eggs, Chili Flakes

Manchester! Na-nanana-na! Manchester! Na-nanana-na!

I fucking hate Manchester sometimes. Most of the time, if I’m being honest. Sure I was born here* but I had little to no choice in that matter, and I live here now, but that’s only because you’re unlikely to find a better UK city experience than sleeping in a tent in St Peter;s Square while you wait to be housed by the council**.

(*well… in Ashton, which nobody in Manchester would consider Manchester, but seeing as nobody outside of Manchester has heard of or is arsed about it, let’s just call it Manchester for the benefit of this post

**and, to bring us back in, there’s a joke that nobody outside Manchester is going to get)

Manchester is special though, yeah? We do things differently, isn’t it? Something something FAC9087546 something something Coronation Street something something actually that person you’re thinking of is from Salford and we’re really inconsistent about whether we consider that a worthwhile distinction. Remember Oasis though? Remember when both the Stone Roses and The Happy Mondays were on the same episode of Top of the Pops? What do you mean you’re not even old enough to remember Top of the Pops?? I’ll have you know that British institution enabled Jimmy Saville to prey on more children than you’ve had hot dinners, and you need to show it some respect!!

Listen, Manchester might have been ‘special’ in the early 18th century, when the Western world was such a big fan of enslaving Africans that it just had more cotton picked than it knew what to do with, and so Manchester invented wage slavery to Spinning Jenny the fuck out of all that shit. And it was so ‘special’ that Karl Marx and Frederick Engels took one look at Manchester’s grimness and thought “Fuck me, this is so bad we need to overthrow this entire system”. I get a similar reaction every time I visit the Trafford Centre. Manchester should be immensely proud that the Communist Manifesto, but instead we get one Engels statue that we nicked from the Soviet Ukraine (that the liberals still complain about!) and we’ve barely 100 members of the Greater Manchester Communist Party.

Instead of learning from our past as Capitalism’s starting gun, instead of truly reflecting on whether the system of transferring third world slavery into first world wage slavery to feed imperialism was a system worth celebrating, the city has doubled down on crony capitalism. Manchester’s motto used to be ‘Concilio Et Labore‘ (‘By Counsel and Work’), but recently that was changed to “Imo Expecta! Tamquam Corrupti Sumus et tam Faciles Pecunias Lavare per Quam London! Possum Tentare Plus Vestrum Russian vel Saudi Nummorum Cum Alio Centum Deliciae Blandit Mumquam Vivet In??” (“No, Wait! We’re Just as Corrupt and as Easy to Launder Money Through as London! Can I Tempt Any More of You Russian or Saudi Squillionaires With Another Hundred Luxury Flats You’ll Never Live In??”). Pretty long motto, yeah, but take up your complaints with Manchester, I didn’t write it. As the council sells off more and more public land to Abu Dhabi to price out its own citizens, Manchester is only ‘special’ right now in quite how elaborately its people are getting mugged off by elected officials despite never agreeing to it or being consulted. It’s truly special how gross it is. Oh, and Manchester University is fleecing students for astronomical prices and is financially complicit in the horrors meted out by the Israeli government, but that’s pretty much the norm these days.

OK, but when people say that Manchester is special and that it does things differently, they’re mostly talking about the music, man, yeah? Which, OK, was a legitimate thing to say in the 1980s when you had Joy Division/New Order, The Smiths, the Stone Roses and more, who no matter your opinions on the groups, made massively important changes to the culture and to the artform that are still influential to this day. Then in the 90s you had Oasis, who were… really popular. No, like, really popular. So popular that the Gallaghers made enough money to move down to London to be surrounded by other rich people pretty fucking immediately and why murals of Liam Gallagher being painted in Ancoats to this day is fucking pathetic.

Then after Oasis… nothing, really.

Sure, some local bands still found success, like elbow (Bury), Blossoms (Stockport) and Harry Styles (Holmes Chapel, Cheshire), but no more than any other city, especially if you’re widening the definition of ‘Manchester’ (me being born in Ashton doesn’t seem so bad now, aye?? Sorry, another one for the Manchester crowd). But that’s fine: Manchester doesn’t celebrate its present, only its past. Ain’t nobody celebrating the success of The (awful) 1975, and that guy shagged Taylor Swift! Where’s their mural, possibly sponsored by Ghetto Gaggers?? Forget about the present, resist the future, do you fancy another photo outside Salford Lads Club?? Yes, I’m saying that’s in Manchester now, do keep up. Did I ever tell you about Spike Island? No, Manchester is special because of music that was released more than 30 years ago.

What I’m saying is: The Mumbles are really great.

That’s obviously subjective, but we can all at least agree that they make a great racket. Their songs are rarely strictly tied to such bourgeois concepts as ‘structure’ or ‘commercial viability’ (and… occasionally… if I’m being honest… ‘listenability’…), the racket they make is often abrasive, often exhilarating, often extremely challenging, but always inspired. ‘In the Pocket of Big Sad’ is more than just the best titled album of the year, it’s an extraordinarily confident and single minded introduction and mission statement by a band making music/noise quite unlike anyone else.

They’re not blazing an entirely new trail, of course: their delirious artpunk can occasionally pay too much homage to the kind of C86 indie that the ‘Madchester‘ (eugh…) would play a part in ushering out. Remember McCarthy and Big Flame? Well, it’s kind of mix between those two, musically. What am I talking about? Of course you don’t remember McCarthy or Big Flame, and why would you? The band’s own production on the record seems to invite those sorts of comparisons, as the record sound like it was mixed at Strawberry Studios in the early to mid 80’s, and I’d like to hear the band get out of their Thatcher government comfort zones and have these ideas represented by more sonic dynamism.

However, never forget that I am a fat, old, fat (did I say that), stupid old man, and that I sometimes shout at my doorbell for being too loud. The record was intended to be as close to the band’s apparently deliriously chaotic live shows as possible, and those who have experienced them play live have said it does that magnificently. I had tickets to see them at Gullivers recently….

But…

So fuck me, I guess?

Despite these minor, petty, psychosexual complaints, Mumbles’ debut is still the scientifically proven, objective 40th greatest album of 2024. The band’s ambition and single mindedness has created a manic noise that’s truly singular in 2024. The songs can be as short as eighteen seconds (“No dicks, no twats, only innies or outties/No boys, no girls, only thems that yearn for death/Tell me I’m worthless!” Close the books, academics, I think we can consider the question of gender officially answered) and as long as nineteen minutes. Because that’s how long they need to be.

But despite their sonic adventourism and ability to make music that sounds like the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse instigating a workers’ revolution, The Mumbles greatest calling card is their frontperson Jacob Nicholas. Jacob’s lyrics are at once angrily instigating and wryly hilarious, and the meta commentary on both life in dying days of Capitalism cannibalising itself and playing silly rock music while society burns called Will Toledo (another person who struggles to keep his songs under ten minutes on occasion) to mind on many occasions. And, whatever you think about ‘In The Pocket of Big Sad’, we can at least all agree that it’s far superior to the last Car Seat Headrest album. Mate, that sucked. I’m not such a big fan of the hippy shit, and simply praising nature is actually no less of a distraction from the threat of cannibal capitalism than playing in some dumb rock band. But they’re still young! Listen, mate, talk to me, I’ll get you into Communism, and the next album will be wild.

It’s not for everyone, it’s not easy to digest, I haven’t been playing as I write this review because I knew it’d make my head hurt a bit, but it’s an astonishingly challenging and dense record that at the very least Jacob Nicholas always ensures rewards your attention.

The Album Title As AI Image:

Fuck, took me a long time to write this one… Next one’s getting 50 words, maximum…