795. Elastica - Elastica (1995)

Track Listing

1. Line Up
2. Annie
3. Connection
4. Car Song
5. Smile
6. Hold Me Now
7. SOFT
8. Indian
9. Blue
10. All Nighter
11. Waking Up
12. Two To One
13. Vaseline
14. Never Here
15. Stutter

Review

Much of Brit-pop seems to be all about ripping off older bands and updating it for the nineties. Elastica is no exception, nowhere is this more obvious than in the big hit, Connection, which is really Three Girl Rhumba by Wire. Well Line Up is Girls and Boys by Blur, but I guess that as the vocalist was shtupping Damon Albarn she was allowed.

That being, said, it is still a pretty catchy album. In terms of attitude and singing style it gets much from the Pretenders, and the music is stolen well enough to still make it sound quite fresh.

Despite the fact that I like the album at quite a basic level, I can't keep myself from being annoyed at the blatant rip-offs, clearly the band can play and some songs seem to be original (at least I don't know where they get it from) so this would be quite unnecessary. That said it is clearly not as single minded as Oasis in its borrowing, it's influences are wider and better and music much more attractive and unpretentious. So a good album which annoys me.


Track Highlights

1. Connection
2. Car Song
3. Vaseline
4. Waking Up

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The band became subject to controversy when several bands sued them for plagiarism. Specifially, the post-punk band Wire (whom Elastica counted as one of their main influences) claimed that many of the band's melodies were taken from Wire compositions. Notably, Wire's "I Am the Fly" has a chorus similar to Elastica's "Line Up" and the intro synthesiser part in Elastica's "Connection" (later also repeated on guitar) is lifted from the guitar riff in Wire's "Three Girl Rhumba" and transposed a semitone (the judgment resulted in an out-of-court settlement for which Wire received no compensation). The Stranglers also passed comment that Elastica's "Waking Up" bore a marked resemblance to their song "No More Heroes".

three rip-offs compared: