Whenever a band messes up, it isn’t always easy to get people back into your corner again. That’s what happened to Happy Mondays – between 1991 and 1994, they tripped the light fantastic only to stupidly trip up and fall between the cracks.
Done and dusted, we all thought, and when HM’s Shaun Ryder and his maracas-shaking mate, Bez, teamed up with a rapper by the name of Kermit, chuckles abounded. Well, excuse you, but Black Grape’s debut kicked Happy Mondays into touch with a sequence of swaggering dance-pop tunes that still sound like no one else.
Capturing the wit and the bare-faced cheek of his former band while upping the quality, this reissue (which includes a second disc and a DVD) is a giddy return to a neglected classic.
