Album: The Streets - The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light

You may have heard that Mike Skinner’s made a film. He’s certainly done the rounds, press-wise, so you’d be hard pushed to have missed it. You have to admire the man’s tenacity. When the money to make a feature film didn’t surface, he decided to fund it himself. And direct, produce, write, edit, score and star in it, too.

Financing it himself gave him complete independence – which is probably why its a noir murder mystery following the life of a DJ. Interestingly, a large chunk of that money came from writing music for the Inbetweeners movie. Which seems appropriate – it’s hard to imagine something like that being made again. It was very of its time, as is/was The Streets’ oeuvre. Originally Skinner gave a voice to a generation of hedonists having the time of their lives even when things were shite. Now what does he have to say?

“The songs are the voice overs,” Skinner has said. “I was trying to make it sound like one of my DJ sets.” The album was finished years ago, apparently (although it has been updated).  Five albums and one mix tape have been and gone and this is his first release since 2011. But has he become a caricature of himself? His distinctive delivery can certainly sound like self-parody but it’s also challenging – he really seems not to care what critics might say and is confident that Streets’ fans will lap this up. And they will.

The album’s press release would, have it that his subject matter is “the oft-repetitive, unspectacular sludge of everyday life.” Certainly, no glamour has been added here. And there are occasional flashes of his lyrical genius, such as “behind every great man a girl rolls her eyes,” ("Funny Dream"). The title track samples a jazz-age song and is a proper departure but verges on nursery-rhyme territory. As does "Kick the Can" but in this instance it totally works. When it works, it’s because things slightly "off" and you don’t know what’s coming next – that was always Skinner’s gift. 

The single "Troubled Waters" comes the closest to the magic melancholic/euphoric mix of past glories like "Blinded by the Light" and "Has It Come to This", and contains what might be the mantra for the whole project – “Outside of a nightclub I don’t know what to do, inside of a nightclub it’s too dark to care”. "Something to Hide" has the call and repeat structure so often used on the earlier albums. But some of the references seem a bit laboured, probably because the world has changed so spectacularly since he burst onto the scene talking about pre-smart phones and Playstations. Now we have “We won’t talk about this on social media” ("Each Day Gives"), and “as painted nails tap rhythms on protected screens” ("Good Old Daze" – the closing track which cleverly refrains that jazz age clip).

Then there’s the philosophising (the title is a Jung quote) – “Beauty’s just a by-product of sex and death” ("Funny Dream") and “The Walk of Shame is my daily commute.” And where we once had "Too Much Brandy", this album opens with "Too Much Yaya".

The production is odd – as if he’s grasping at an analogue vibe, with the lyrics turned up as high as ever. But if you liked the old stuff, you’ll like this. Inevitably there’s less bravado, less fire but the majority of it satisfies. Quite how it works with the film remains to be seen.

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