From early tales of urban mundanity to sprawling narrative LPs and a stint as UK garage’s Aesop, The Streets’ approach to music has often been novelistic.
It’s perhaps a surprise, then, that it has taken Skinner this long to make his feature debut, writing, directing, starring in, and producing the film and accompanying album, both called The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light. Structure has always been paramount to Streets projects, from the Joseph Campbell-worthy hero’s journey of A Grand Don’t Come For Free to the decline and fall of The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living and eventual emergence into peace on Computers And Blues.
Skinner has stated that the album, his sixth, and first in 12 years, “doesn’t exist” without the film, a noir in which the auteur’s DJ character gets in over his head after helping a nightclub patron with a drug related death. Listening in isolation, there’s certainly a cinematic structure to it, from the grabby opener of “Too Much Yayo” to the melancholic sunrise of closer “Good Old Daze” (as a side note, final tracks have always been a Streets specialty).
The problem, though, is that we’ve heard a fair bit of this before. Substitute “Yayo” for brandy, or indeed prang, and the tale of overindulgence doesn’t exactly feel fresh. Similarly “Money Isn’t Everything” adds to the catalogue of Streets songs considering the pros and cons of consumerism; see the entirety of his third album for more on this subject.
Skinner’s also prone to the odd lyrical clunker, too. Gone
are the days of everyday observations or asides about ITV documentaries
and unwelcome chicken on pizza, or the gossipy detail of “When You
Wasn’t Famous”. Nowadays (and frankly since Everything Is Borrowed),
some Streets lyrics sound like an old relative’s Facebook feed. “Don’t
sweat the petty things / and don’t pet the sweaty things” he says, for
no real reason, on the limply skanking “Something To Hide”. The
otherwise-impressive “Bright Sunny Day” induces groans with “Sometimes
you’re the statue, but mostly you’re the pigeon”.
This is Mike Skinner, though, so it’s never going to be
devoid of lyrical quality in its entirety. He’s charmingly
self-effacing, having gone “From the top of who’s who to the bottom of
who’s he”, and finds one of his best hooks on highlight “Kick The Can”.
While it’d be nice to hear him return to the verbal dexterity of a
“Sharp Darts”, or at least a “Trust Me”, that would perhaps be
inappropriate for what appears to be primarily a movie soundtrack. Talk
over the entirety of your film and you end up with Blue Story.
The past decade has seen Skinner delving deeper into DJing, and it shows - The Darker The Shadow
has some of his finest and most interesting beats to date. “Someone
Else’s Tune” goes down a hitherto-unexplored Giorgio Moroder avenue, and
first single “Troubled Water” is his most club-ready track since
“Blinded By The Lights” (which, yes, it does sound quite a lot like).
The title track and “Gonna Hurt When This Is Over” go out on limbs with
Dixieland trumpets and sitars respectively, but the cheeky inventiveness
is a jolt in the arm for a record which improves greatly as it goes on.
And that, ultimately, is The Streets’ great success: while
Skinner’s everyman appeal was jettisoned one Mercury prize and a
dalliance with a still-unnamed popstar ago, it’s impossible not to want
him to win, to find his £1,000 or his inner peace. The record isn’t a
patch on his very best stuff, but compare Original Pirate Material
to the work of the vast majority of artists and they’ll come up short.
For every eye rolling moment, there are more than enough to make you
glad The Streets are back.
