All You Good Good People E.P. - Embrace

Track List:

1. All You Good Good People
2. You Don't Amount To Anything - This Time
3. The Way I Do
4. Free Ride

Running time: 16 minutes
Released: 1997

Ah, Embrace. To me, they were the palatable part of Britpop for a short while. I hated Oasis, thought Blur were poseurs (I have come around a bit on this, since realising Albarn's talent) and could not stand The Verve or the 101 other derivative incarnations of that movement. 

However this single hooked me, though if I remember rightly I had already liked The Last Gas and taped it off the radio. Onto cassette and everything. I can still hear All You Good Good People in my head, and The Way I Do and Free Ride bring to mind memories of lovelorn youthfulness. The other track here has no place in my memory. I liked this enough to buy the album The Good Will Out when it followed.

I suspect I will not be so quick to praise this time, however the opening chords of the single are still very pleasant. The vocal/lyric is less interesting but there is a wider arrangement or orchestration on this song that softens the edge of whining northern bleakness that I always felt followed some of the other Britpoppers around like a bad smell. That said the vocal really obscures the arrangement in places, which is a shame because the big sound is quite effective otherwise, even if the song should really end at the 4:30 mark where the first swell concludes. Instead we get a minute and a half of pointless extension with no further verse or chorus and a lead out that does not add anything or substantially change the tone. Wasted space.

You Don't Amount to Anything - This Time is... ugh. Bad piano is bad, bad vocal is worse. This is car crash stuff, complete with self-indulgent cat-strangled guitar. The Way I Do is pretty bad, too. Not a  poor man's Lennon, a destitute man's Lennon. I think I was probably too unaware to notice the mimicry at the time, but now it is so blindingly obvious and painful to sit through. And I say this as someone who is not a fan of The Beatles or Lennon in particular. Unless Free Ride is a stormer, this whole disc goes bye-bye as, I have the title track elsewhere and that is sufficiently a) OK and b) nostalgic that I would keep it.

Free Ride, then... the piano is tinny. I think it must have been recorded on an electric keyboard... or maybe my ears have gone. Probably the latter, alas. It is a bleak song and the lyric is pretty asinine but I cannot help but like the melody and the tone is reasonable.  It is a keeper, but barely; the sort of tune I do not mind popping up 1 in 15000 or so but would never go out of my way to listen to again. Actually - that sentence right there is reason enough to get rid of it. Off with it's head!