Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Radio & Music >

When Boo Woke Up or; Oh BraveCaptain, my Captain!

Our Lady of The Two Towers

19:56 / 02.02.03

Just wondered if I'm alone in liking this, heard 'Advertisements for Myself' which is about the third or fourth album (but the first I've heard of or most mainstream record shops seem to carry) by BraveCaptain aka Martin Carr aka the Curly-Haired One Who Wasn't Sice From The Boo Radleys.

It's pretty good, sort of indie electronica, with the pendulum sometimes swung more in the favour of indie, and sometimes the other way. Some people have complained that he hasn't got as good a voice as Sice but I don't think he ever tries to force it to go where it wouldn't feel comfortable. He can certainly more than hold a tune. The songs are mainly about the tawdriness of modern England, you can take the boy out of indie... And there's a definite sense that the Captain has a number of specific bones to pick with Noo Labour not living up to its promises. But there's also a sense of humour, at times rather bitter, as in 'I was a Teenage Death Squad'. And the sleeve quotes Orwell too; "Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket". Recommended, for what little my opinion means anything. Not that I'm advertising it you understand.

Anyone else heard this? Anyone got the other albums? And is Sice's solo project 'The Eggman' still going?

freelance hairdresser

21:47 / 03.02.03

I think it's his second LP as BC, but I might be wrong. I bought the first Fingertip EP but I have to say I wasn't knocked out by it, which is a shame as I've always been a huge lover of his work with the Boos. He was interviewed on a Radio Wales programme a while back - he's now holed up in Cardiff, and he was saying that he's finally realised that he can't do music as his sole "job" now. A real shame.

23:10 / 03.02.03

I've got the first one. Somewhere.

It completely failed to catch my attention. Bought it because the last Radleys album, Kingsize, seemed to herald a return to form after the pretty dire C'mon Kids. The BC album was a step in the wrong direction, Carr falling back on shitty indie rock standards and managing to lose everything that made the Radleys great (the brushing aside of genre constraints and the freewheeling imagination that seeped out of Giant Steps). A bit like Bernard Butler trying to do psychedelia.

I've heard some encouraging noises about this latest album, but I'm still not entirely convinced. I'll probably obtain a couple of the tracks from somewhere and see if they grab me.

Nelson Evergreen

23:11 / 03.02.03

I loved the Boos too, although I think in hindsight I was more passionate about what they were trying to achieve. Great songs, blinding ideas and arrangements, yes, but.... Sice somehow wasn't quite the right singer to front the fearsome avant-indie dubblegum pop group the Boos should have been, was he?

I love the Brave Captain artwork, by the way, but haven't heard as much of the actual music as I ought to.

freelance hairdresser

23:30 / 03.02.03

I heard some tracks from the new one on that show - more experimental than Fingertip, and no MC Mabon happily, but it just didn't make me want to rush out and buy it. Everything's Alright Forever is still my fave LP that he's been involved with, though. Giant Steps coming a close second.

Dunno what Sice is up to now though.

01:26 / 06.02.03

I know Sice released a solo album under the name "Eggman", but that was probably some time ago. Maybe even before the Boos officially split.

I saw Brave Captain play upstairs in a pub in Preston a while back, as a warm-up to their proper tour, and due to a combination of circumstances (me girlfriend being in a wheelchair, us having a heated and lengthy debate with someone, doors being locked) Martin Carr himself ended up helping us down the fire escape. Sterling behaviour in itself, but the man then put us on the guest list for the first gig of the tour proper two days later. Not only that, he remembered that I'd interviewed him for the college paper three years earlier and asked if I was still writing. You can't be sounder than that without actually BEING Oskar Schindler.

If you want more, I have anecdotes about interviewing him. Just ask my friends, they've heard them more than once. More than enough, probably.

NDD