Nick Hoad

“I’m not going to spoil things for you, but you’re going to have opinions about The Streets.” The words of a friend of mine who’s more familiar with their work than I am. Let’s see if he’s right.

In a break from tradition, I’m not going to go through every track individually this time, because Original Pirate Material is quite a different album to what’s come before it. That is to say, it’s UK garage, a genre with which I have zero previous experience, and not much of an idea how to tackle from a reviewer’s standpoint. I don’t know how many of the album’s qualities are par for the course in UK garage and how many are unique to The Streets. In any case, I’ll press on, mentioning individual tracks where necessary but not doing a full play-by-play.

Original Pirate Material can be split into three different elements: the backing tracks, the lyrics, and the delivery of said lyrics. Let’s deal with each of them in turn.

The backing tracks are really creatively put together. To be sure, they’re often very short loops, designed to be rapped over and lacking any kind of melody, but they fulfil this purpose extremely well. In several cases, such as the choppy vocals of Has It Come To This, the syncopated low strings of Same Old Thing, and the timpani rolls of It’s Too Late, I’d happily listen to them on their own, and they could easily be spun out into full-length instrumental tracks. One of the longest tracks, Weak Become Heroes, draws attentions to the repetition with the lyrics “but that same piano loops over and over and over”. That it does, two bars on a loop for over five minutes. This, and the six-minute Stay Positive, are by far the worst of it, the rest are much better. A weird quirk of the album is how abrupt some of the endings are; some of them seem like they were cut off prematurely.

I had trouble connecting with the lyrics; I’m not and never have been part of that culture. It’s tough for a sheltered, middle-class guy who doesn’t even drink to relate to songs about the London drug scene. That aside though, there’s a lot of originality and cleverness in the lyrics, and the success rate compared to the sheer volume of rhymes is impressive. Very few of them are duds, but “barometer” absolutely does not rhyme with “interpreter”, and I’d be remiss not to mention it.

All these lyrics have a tendency to fall flat however, when delivered the way they are. There is absolutely no sense of rhythm in Mike Skinner’s rapping, save for one glorious but all-too-brief moment in Sharp Darts (also home to the awful barometer/interpreter rhyme). It’s very frustrating, it seems as though all these lines could have some rhythm applied to them, but for whatever reason, Skinner’s chosen not to. I’m not going to say this has ruined the whole album, though. I certainly *think* it’s a detriment, but perhaps the alternative wouldn’t work as well as I’m imagining. And since that version doesn’t exist, I’m going reserve at least some judgement and not condemn the album for this. It’s not a choice I particularly agree with, but I can believe it’s a choice with merits.

The one individual track that does deserve an in-depth individual mention is The Irony Of It All, which is, unreservedly, fantastic. It’s got theatre, political commentary, comedy, and surprisingly advanced music theory (the rhythm in the drums is artfully wonky), all rolled into one perfectly executed package. The weird, rhythmless delivery that was a hindrance before even serves a purpose here. Strange to say, but I think this might be the best song the poster’s thrown at me so far.

Deciding on a star rating for Original Pirate Material is my toughest job yet, because there are several factors of hugely different quality. The only thing I can think to compare it to is Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which, in my opinion, careens wildly between brilliant and terrible on a scene by scene basis, averaging out at a 6/10, but with no single 6/10 stretch. The difference with Original Pirate Material is that the good and the bad happens at the same time. If not for The Irony Of It All, I might have abandoned the star rating entirely. As it is, that song has made me come to a decision.

Favourite Song: The Irony Of It All

Next Time: Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On

Note: I might change my mind on the rating at some point. If it’s still at 3.5, I haven’t done so yet.