| The Stone Roses/The Stone Roses |
| Written by Shabby Culture |
| Wednesday, 12 August 2009 12:18 |
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Video
 As The Stone Roses’ debut is remastered and reissued, Matthew Horton and Ed Whatley reassess its place in rock’s firmament. It was 20 years ago today… well, give or take. The August reissue of The Stone Roses’ debut album is at least a few months late. I distinctly remember buying it in May 1989, a hot handful of three in a Milton Keynes record store. The other two were Madonna’s Like A Prayer and Soul II Soul’s Club Classics Vol. One, two more albums that would benefit from a box set of demos, heftier bass, 200gsm booklets, hand-carved USB sticks and bronze busts of the artists. Still, this reissue’s delay at least has some pertinence. Any perception of The Stone Roses is tainted by procrastination, the gruesome four-year gestation of Second Coming surely grist to the debut’s hype mill. Would that debut have grabbed classic status if we hadn’t had half a decade to whip up its legend? Um, yeah. From I Wanna Be Adored’s bone-dry fuck you to the freewheeling baggy freakout of I Am The Resurrection’s funkadelic coda, The Stone Roses is a swaggering, monkey-walking, ecstacy-faced bullet of a record. That bullet buried itself in the limpid shoulderblades of Smiths copyists scrabbling about for some kind of position in the late-80s indie scene, freeing the Roses to remodel the landscape in their own image. It’s not their fault this meant siring Oasis. Revisit She Bangs The Drums to hear how C86 jangle can carry a bit of muscle, Waterfall for psychedelia’s coyest dance shuffle, (Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister to believe The Byrds can glide again. Lazy John Squire spirals let Shoot You Down coast deceptively, Reni and Mani flex and groove their way through the closer (warming up nicely), Ian Brown gets enough studio time to pretty up his drone. Once no-hopers, the Roses had no right to sound so confident here, but let’s be thankful they didn’t care. Brass balls made this record golden. MH A 20-year anniversary can go two ways. A celebration of a beautiful beginning that heralded a whole load more happiness alongside the normal amounts of heartache and hackery most bands have to wade through. Or the other side of the coin - an opening moment so heads, shoulders, knees and toes above everything the participants have done since that it actually renders the album faintly depressing. A relationship that started off all late-night romance and quickly turned into bickering in the dairy aisle in Tesco. This is a quicksilver record, delicate and effortless, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, with a fluttering hopefulness shot through. All the things you want. But all it does is make you think of what followed. Spike Island birthing Oasis’ Wetherspoons Woodstocks. Independent music as something to be consumed rather than participated in. Ian Brown still grinding out dull-as-Tuesday “beats” and stoner wisdom (that he managed to sustain the Byrdsian beauty of something like Mersey Paradise is shocking, now). John Squire’s cod/mock/cock psychedelia in the Seahorses. Those sodding hats. Boys frugging at student discos. The Inspiral Carpets. Maybe this is too harsh. Had they gone down the Lee Mavers route and made One Perfect Thing before hiding in a haze for 20 years, we might be remonstrating with them for wasting their talent. Maybe it really doesn’t matter what you do once you’ve done something this good. This is why we love records - whatever happens after, they keep the moment perfect. EW On The Late Show
The Byrds
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