Rattus Norvegicus (IV) [Remastered] - Stranglers (The) > Reviews > Brooding aggressive filthy heaven

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Definitely a cut above the rest
Lyrics	Standard
Quality and consistency of tracks	Flawless
How does it compare to the artist's other releases	Outstanding
Value for Money

Advantages:	The sound, the attitude, the sleaze
Disadvantages:	A bit grumpy

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

'DUN DERRUN, DERUNNDERRUNDER, DUN DERRUN!!!'

Grinding, in yer face, grunt and grind bass, with the most despicable leer and sneer you have ever heard....

That was the public face (or noise) of The Stranglers as they rode on the back of the Angry Young Men of punk in 1976-77 to come to public prominence as the dirty old men of new wave, meninblack who were more reminiscent of navvies and flashers than fey pop stars....

I first happened across The Stranglers one night on The (Dear) Old Grey Whistle Test as they famously started to discover new wave and they featured the band in a live clip singing (or was that grimacing?) 'Hanging Around' and was instantly seduced by their sleazy, sinewy, grim rock and roll.

They were instantly neither of the establishment nor of the snotty young things of new wave - this was a bunch of bruisers who looked like they wanted to eat your daughters (after doing all sorts of other unpleasant things to them first). They were just so bloody different and so blindingly NASTY...

They dressed in black, but they somehow looked at odds to the Goth movement of later years, they were just so grimy and scruffy and filthy, both physically and spiritually. And they had the hulking pensioner, the fearsome Jet Black pounding out the unpleasantly rock steady rhythm from the back of the stage - not so much 'Hope I die before I get old...' as 'Now I'm dead I couldn't give a toss...'

The Stranglers undoubtedly jumped on the coat tails of punk to ride their way into the headlines, but they had actually been floating around the London club scene for a couple of years before Bill Grundy's ill fated swear in with the Pistols and their entourage in 1976.

Singer and guitarist Hugh Cornwell was living with Black in a flat in Guildford, above Black's off licence and ice cream factory. He had read chemistry at Bristol University, taught biology and played in a number of bands, including one called Johnny Sox in Sweden. He joined up with Black when he returned to London through an advert for like minded individuals in one of the music papers.

A young Londoner, Jean Jacques Burnel, born of French parents and an accomplished classical guitarist met the pair and took up bass in the trio which was dubbed the Guildford Stranglers and used to travel to gigs in Black's ice cream van.

The line up was completed in 1975 when they added keyboard player Dave Greenfield in 1975 and dropped the 'Guildford', going on to play over 200 live dates during the next 18 months, including regular shows at London clubs like the Nashville and the Hope And Anchor. They also secured the prime support slot on Patti Smith's UK tour in 1975.

The addition of Greenfield gave a new Gothic splendour to the band's sound, with his swirling organ and synth lines bringing back memories of Ray Manzarek and getting them some flattering comparisons with The Doors, but they were never interested in the romantic poetry of Morrison and honed a bludgeoning, rhythm heavy bump and grind around the metallic bounce of Burnel's aggressive bass playing and Cornwell's spidery chopping and scratching on guitar. The Stranglers sound was a fearsome, rushing juggernaut of noise, flattening everything in its path and taking no prisoners.

As London record labels started falling over themselves to sign new bands in the punk explosion of 1976, United Artists captured The Stranglers and paired them with producer Martin Rushent, who proved the perfect sculptor for their fearsome raw material.

The first release was the heady single, '(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)' which featured Eric Clark's sax and surprisingly reached Number 44 in the UK charts. It proved to be an excellent introduction to the amazing debut album, 'Rattus Norvegicus', which followed hot on the single's heels and reached Number 4 in the album charts.

It's a stunning, shocking masterpiece of a debut album and was my first new wave album purchase on the back of that OGWT appearance and remains to this day one of my fave albums...

The sleeve said it all really, with the unpleasant London hit men pictured in a dimly lit dark mansion with all sorts of nasty trophies plastered all over the walls. The grim Greenfield and Burnel at the front seemed to be silently mouthing "Come on you faggots, do you want some of this..." while Black and Cornwell frowned unpleasantly in the mid distance. The back had a rat by the setting sun, silently and resolutely going about its seedy business.

It was a dark and brooding album, full of nastiness and shadows, their world was of the sewer and the night and an unhealthy preoccupation with women as things to be consumed - in fact, that would remain one of the major criticisms of The Stranglers over the years. Whether it was feigned or not, they came over as resolutely misogynistic and hateful, leering over girls and eager to abuse them (see 'Sometimes', 'London Lady', 'Princess Of The Streets', 'Peaches' and 'Ugly'). It was always a bit too cack handed and over the top to be really serious, and you always got the impression they were playing up to the publicity somewhat, but they didn't bother trying to prove the critics wrong and their chauvinism secured them a considerable heavy rock following to complement the punk hordes.

The stand out tracks were 'Goodbye Toulouse', the aforementioned 'Grip' and 'Hanging Around' and the lengthy song cycle 'Down In The Sewer', although even the nastier songs were extremely seductive and absorbing with their very individual world view and pumping aggression. The lasting memory is of dark and evil soundscapes with scurrying rats and filth all around us. It's an uneasy world that The Stranglers inhabited and they seemed intent on dragging us helplessly under their stone before they had their evil way with us.

Dig beneath that shallow analysis, however, and you find some of the most intoxicating and unforgettable rock music of the late Seventies. It wasn't punk or heavy rock, and it was a world away from pop, but it was undoubtedly very interesting, with the twin pillars of Burnel's seedy, aggressive, thunking bass and the soaring but claustrophobic organ of Greenfield. Cornwell's guitar supplied the scritch scratch colour and then there was the THROB THROB THROB of Black constantly pounding away beneath it all.

Full track listing:

Sometimes
Goodbye Toulouse
London Lady
Princess Of The Streets
Hanging Around
Peaches
(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)
Ugly
Down In the Sewer

Excerpts from the NME review of the album way back when ~~~~~~~~~~~~

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"About giving the woman some stick."

Thus begins the ecstatic review of this album (referring to the opener, "Sometimes") in Strangled, the apparently Stranglers-sanctioned free fanzine of what seems to be The Stranglers Fan Club.

Evidently the niceties of the late '60s social humanism - women's lib, gay lib, and the respectful terminology that seemed such an essential basis for their fragile advances (not calling women "peaches" of gays "faggots" like you don't call blacks "nignogs" unless you're wearing an NF armband and have a crowd of thugs around you) - all this seems to have gone by the board with the emergence of a generation seemingly devoid of self-respect and thus, by trite but true extension, devoid of self-respect for others.
It is with this defiantly oafish and thoughtlessly rebellious "attitude" that The Stranglers, visitors from another generation which may have wavered into complacency these past few years, choose to align themselves.

Not being a great C&W fan, I'd have to think hard before I could name an album as grossly sexist as this. If I've misunderstood, and someone can demonstrate the underlying "subversiveness" of the insults that fly relentlessly at the opposite sex on "Rattus Norvegicus", then I'll be overjoyed to understand, and to take back my criticism.

"Little lady/With Dingwalls bullshit/You're so stupid/Fetid brainwaves/Little lady/What really happens/When you see mirrors/You get the shivers/Making love to/The Mersey Tunnel/With a sausage/Have you ever been to Liverpool?/Please don't talk much/It bugs my ears/Tonight you talked/For a thousand years/Plastic's real when you're sick/Plastic's real when you're real sick/Tell me what you've got to look so pleased about/London lady/Why did you lay me?/Your head is crowded/With the names you've hounded/The rings around your/Eyes they show me/You realise/The party's over/London lady."

Jean Jacques Burnel once actually quoted those words at me in order to show me "London Lady" wasn't sexist, which is pretty extraordinary as it's a nauseating putdown of female promiscuity, with all the old, subliminal, reactionary what's-all-right-for-the-man-is-wrong-for-the-woman dogma whose destruction would prove a far more radical step than destroying tower blocks - a "policy" which The Stranglers, who actually once claimed to be "too political" for my taste, don't even advocate anyway.

Burnel's defence of his putdown of the Dingwalls groupie is that "that's no way for a chick to be". No way for a what to be?

"Grip", the single (next one's probably "Go Buddy Go", which explains its absence), chugs along okay. "Ugly" is, I think, Burnel's only vocal apart from "London Lady", and that's not the only reason they're the worst tracks - it's a noise; and finally the ecstatic look-at-me-I'm-a-bad-guy West Side Story underground saga of "Down In The Sewer".

A big tick for the music, an emphatic cross for the words - but words don't sell records. Perhaps sadly, they don't stop people buying either.

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Clearly the writer was no great fan of The Stranglers, but who gives a flying one?