Usually, when the founding member of an influential band dies, all manner of cash-in tribute albums and anthologies are released, but then Swell Maps were never really like other bands.
Following the death last month of founder Nikki Sudden, Wastrels And Whippersnappers – a Swell Maps rarities retrospective – has been realised. And it sounds a lot like a bunch of toddlers throwing a strop in an upturned metal dustbin. Nikki would've been proud.
Swell Maps are a band that most people have heard of, but few have actually heard. On the surface, a group of Solihull teenagers trying to rip off Can and T.Rex without having any discernible musical talent sounds like it'd be terrible, but tell that to Sonic Youth and Pavement, who lifted the Swell Maps sound and claimed it as their own in the early nineties. Even one of the Gorillaz wore a Swell Maps T-shirt once, and they've sung with Madonna. Gorillaz, that is, not Swell Maps.
And so here's Wastrels And Whippersnappers – 23 tracks of early unheard Swell Maps mayhem. If you're going to invest in your first Swell Maps album, then there's a good chance Wastrels And Whippersnappers isn't for you. Similarly, you should give this record a miss if you don't like straying too far from ultraclear hi-fi sound – Wastrels And Whippersnappers contains some of the murkiest, muddiest home-recorded sound we've heard in a long time.
There's nothing on Wastrels And Whippersnappers from after 1977; the year of Read About Seymour, the debut Swell Maps single and two years before their first album appeared. So, as a snapshot of a band blindly feeling their way to fruition, Wastrels And Whippersnappers makes for an interesting listen. Unpredictable instrumentals and lo-fi cover versions of the Batman theme-tune are punctuated by complete songs, like early versions of Dresden Style and Full Moon-Blam-Full Moon. At the other extreme, there's Gramafonica – 100 seconds of backwards fairground organ and frightening sound effects that makes Revolution 9 sound like S Club 7.
Maybe not one to slip on during a dinner party, then, but Wastrels And Whippersnappers is a brilliant, funny, inventive important lesson for anyone who thinks that punk begins and ends with Green Day, or that having musical ability is more important than having ideas. And that's the best obituary Nikki Sudden could ever have wished for.
Order Wastrels And Whippersnappers by Swell Maps from Amazon for less than a tenner
[story by Stuart Heritage]