The Cribs' 2005 breakthrough single "Hey Scenesters!" was a curious thing: A pointed piss-take of the only demographic who would probably care to buy their records. But instead of distancing the Yorkshire trio from the striped-shirt/black-jeaned plebes, it left you wondering: If these guys hate the scene so much, why do they seem so eager to join it by giving themselves a just-another-The-band name and pumping out standard-issue student-disco fare? That the band namedrop indie iconoclasts like Calvin Johnson and Bobby Conn in their bio while sounding like their record collection begins with Is This It and ends with Up the Bracket only makes the gesture seem more misguided.
Well the lads are nothing if not tenacious, opening their new album with another meta-missive-- albeit this one's directed at the herd-like masses. But the smug self-satisfaction of "Hey Scenesters!" has been displaced by the more sobering realization that the only way to rise above indie insularity is "to impress our bovine public." And so Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever spares no expense in making sure the cows come home: The Cribs' major-label debut was helmed by Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos (who assumes the famous-Scottish-producer role filled by Edwyn Collins on 2005's The New Fellas), mixed by alt-rock heavyweight Andy Wallace, and features perhaps the unlikeliest indie-celeb cameo since Laetitia Sadier showed up on a Common album.
But all the marquee names in the world wouldn't mean a thing if the Cribs didn't step up in the songwriting department, and the trio answer Kapranos' ready-for-prime-time production with chart-gazing tunes. In contrast to The New Fellas' rough-sketch pub-rock slop, there's a marked increase in passion and precision-- it would appear Kapranos has taught frontman Ryan Jarman a thing or two about projecting his voice to the back rows. Opening trifecta "Our Bovine Public", "Girls Like Mystery", and "Men's Needs" charge out of the gate brandishing a familiar arsenal of morse-code guitar riffs, new-waved drumbeats and thick-accented shout-speak, but like the Futureheads on their first album (and unlike the Futureheads on their second), the Cribs have found a way to translate their twitchy tension into compact, exciting pop songs where the bridges are sturdy enough to be choruses.
Though "Men's Needs" is answered later on by the Pixies-pinching "Women's Needs", the "Whatever" in the album title ultimately sums up the half-hearted attempt at conceptual narrative. And that's probably for the best, as the Cribs don't provide any probing insights into the mysteries of gender politics (in case you haven't heard: men are selfish pricks). And besides, Jarman's more charismatic when pointing the finger at himself: "I'm a realist/ I'm a romantic," he sings on "I'm a Realist", before drawing attention to that admission's inherent contradiction: "I'm an indecisive piece of shit."
But the lyrics are ultimately secondary to the album's spirited momentum, which maintains a steady clip until being derailed by the late-game curveball of "Be Safe", featuring a surprising, spoken-word appearance from Lee Ranaldo (though his past production work with You Am I suggests a certain soft spot for fledgling power-pop bands). But rather than running wild with his patented sci-fi/beat-poet spiel, Ranaldo narrates this lugubrious power ballad with a trite, anti-consumerist screed that could've been ripped straight from the diary of one of the Cribs' more depressed 16-year-old fans; Jarman's climactic, emo-kid chorus confirms the song's status as a second-rate knock-off of Nada Surf's "Popular". It's an unnecessary incongruity on a record that had already done well to fulfill its loftier ambitions, and the Cribs seem to know it-- is it a coincidence that the album closes with a humbling acoustic ballad called "Shoot the Poets"?
