— Sian Pattenden
One of the things that makes 1989-90 so musically fascinating is that it was a time in which previously unsuccessful groups suddenly made it big. The Farm, Happy Mondays, James, Primal Scream, The Stone Roses and, yes, The Soup Dragons had all been languishing in the indie scene until seemingly out of nowhere they all began scoring hit singles. The cause? Changing styles and tastes no doubt played a part but it shouldn't go unnoticed that they all began putting out better records at this time.
It was the Roses and Mondays who ended up carving out the bulk of the sales and acclaim and they remain baggy's best remembered groups. The latter were perhaps the first indie guitar group since The Smiths to really excite young people while the former was being fronted by the most charismatic yet peculiar pop star since Ian Dury. The latter headlined Spike Island while the former earned album-of-the-year honours from both the Melody Maker and the NME. They were a veritable Beatles-Stones, Slade-T-Rex and Blur-Oasis. Everyone seemed to have a favourite baggy group but it was always between those two; it was whoever you happened to have in third place that could vary from person to person.
Rounding out the Madchester Top 3 in my esteem was Motherwell's The Soup Dragons. True, their output is thin. As I say above, their work in the mid-to-late eighties is feeble, something that Sian Pattenden agrees with. Listening to some of their early singles, it's like they were trying to emulate The Jesus & Mary Chain but had no idea how to go about doing so. (Modern art buffs will tell you that while Jackson Pollock's drip technique was made to look random and, thus, easy to replicate, it was in fact deliberate and studied and this goes some way to explaining why thousands of young artists have failed to come close to his brilliance; I think there's a parallel there with J&MC and their many imitators). They also fell apart rather rapidly — and on the heels of a bit of a North American breakthrough with 1992's "Divine Thing".
But in between they were every bit as good as either ver Mondays or ver Roses, two bands who also might as well have packed it in when ver Dragons did so. Initially a flop that managed to do worse than lame attempts like "Soft as Your Face" and "The Majestic Head", the original version of "Mother Universe" is nevertheless their first record that anyone would ever choose to listen to. It has quite a good tune, the band is tight and there's no way you won't be singing along before its three minutes are up. Longtime fans (to the extent that they had any) may have been upset by this change in direction but it's pointless to scream "SELL Out!" when you only reach number ninety-four.
Taking a page out of the Mondays' book, they went and recorded a cover version for their next go at the charts. "He's Gonna Step on You Again" had been a hit twenty years' earlier but no one seemed to remember it in '90 and the Dragons replicated it by covering an early Rolling Stones song that somehow flew under the radar for a quarter century. Given what this Scots indie-dance act would do with it, you'd think that Jagger and that lot would've punched out a rip roaring take of "I'm Free" but, sadly, it sounds reflective when it didn't need to be. For a band that often put everything into their music
In some ways, this Soup Dragons' cover is like imaging what the Stones' original should have been like. Sean Dickson belts out a vocal that Mick would've been proud of, it has a lot more musical bounce and the use of a choir is something that the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band would come to use later in the sixties on cuts such as "Salt of the Earth" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want". Maybe I'm making the obvious connection with Jagger's guest spot on Peter Tosh's "(You Gotta Walk) Don't Look Back" but it's easy to picture them bringing in a toaster not unlike Junior Reid joining ver Soups on "I'm Free".
"I'm Free" gave The Soup Dragons a Top Five smash which was only topped or matched by fellow baggy groups Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses. In an attempt to follow it they went back to what should have worked before. Pattenden says it's "completely re-recorded" though Wikipedia describes it as having been "reworked". Dickson's vocal sounds a bit different while the musical additions are so vast that they could very well be covering up the exact same rhythm track underneath. In any case, the results do the trick: what they did to a lackluster Stones song, they had now done to one of their own numbers.
On the other hand, this rave-friendly "Mother Universe" is a bit like "I'm Free"-lite. The gospel choir isn't as much like a Baptist church in the deep south and in place of Reid's toasting there's that very common sample that has always sounded — to these ears, at least — like "bring in my Buddha culture y'all". It's still catchy and you'll no doubt still be singing along just as with the original but it doesn't quite manage to capture that ecstatic pop thrill that they got out of their biggest hit. I would agree with Pattenden that it's "more exciting" than the original but it's still worth pointing out that they seemed to have an easier time covering the Stones than they did when they tried covering themselves.
The Soup Dragons would go on to release a pair of strong albums. 1990's Lovegod sold well and remains one of the better Madchester LP's. Two years later they put out Hotwired which failed to replicate the success of its predecessor. The dumper beckoned but for "Divine Thing" being a Top 30 hit in the US. This was a feat that their contemporaries wouldn't come close to matching (no, EMF and Jesus Jones don't count in spite of what I thought about baggy back then). American college radio had a thing in those days for witty and playful guitar rock and the Dragons briefly found a niche.
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
The Beautiful South: "A Little Time"
"...and would be quite pleasant and dribbly if it didn't feature that awful woman who sung on "You Keep It All In" doing her best Shirley Temple impression once again", argues Pattenden. Ouch. Briana Corrigan wasn't for everybody. I personally think The Beautiful South were never the same after she left but I'm sure there are others who reckon that was precisely when they became any good. No accounting for taste and all that lark. With a killer video and that rarest of things in a duet (the narrative resolves by the end of the song!), "A Little Time" is no deep fan's favourite South track (it's certainly no "From Under the Covers", "I Think the Answer's Yes" or "I'm Your no.1 Fan") but it's one that great deal of people are fond of. A good way in to all things Beautiful South. Pattenden things there's something amiss with them but I think they were only getting started. That is until Corrigan left which was only a couple years away. Worse luck.
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