Within ten minutes of the tape rolling in his first ever NME interview, The Others' frontman Dominic Masters had admitted to a complete stranger that he was an occasional crack-dabbler, that he was very much in love with his transexual Swedish boyfriend Johan, and that he grew up watching his mum deal drugs out of the back door.
Now, for scientific purposes, let's put that figure into perspective. It takes, on average, 50 minutes to get any of Kings of Leon to admit to having crabs, an hour to get Jet to say anything even vaguely interesting, never mind intelligent, and a solid two hours and a large inflatable penis to elicit any kind of reaction whatsoever from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Only Johnny 'The Gob' Borrell can compete with Masters when it comes to yielding pull-quotes in record time and, even then, most of his are cribbed from the Big Book Of Things To Say When You're A Rock Star. Music magazine editors the length of the land can sleep soundly at night in the knowledge of Masters' mere existence, while broadsheet cultural commentators celebrate the day he was beamed from the heavens into an east London hovel, equipped with a ready-made Utopian manifesto of class rebellion, social revolt and really heavy drugs for them to get worked up about.
Yet, amid all the headlines, bold-print quotations and sensationalism, something rather intrinsic has been forgotten - The Music, maaaaan. Masters is first and foremost a rock'n'roll star, and while we like them flawed, sexually confused and eager to sup Drano from wine goblets should duty call, we also prefer them to be, y'know, good.
Would anyone really have cared how many nights a week Dominic took drugs is 'This Is For The Poor' hadn't been one of the most terrifyingly visceral debut singles of recent memory? Of course they fucking wouldn't. When NME called The Others "Britains most worshipped new band" back in May, what we really meant was "London's most worshipped new band", but just two singles and a handful of UK tours later, we've belatedly been proved right. And guess what? It had bugger all to do with crack, smack and the editorial headaches caused by Dominic's loose tongue.
The Others reckon their eponymous debut album is the 'Definitely Maybe' of the noughties and will shift at least 100,000 copies, making them bona fide superstars by 2006. While the sight of Dominic shambling onstage at the Brit Awards to collect yet another statuette from a grinning Nell McAndrew before holding up a piece of paper with "STONED - CHEERS!" scribbled on it by way of acceptance speech is one we'd gladly whore our own mother to see, we won't be holding our breath any time soon. Yet it's difficult to escape the creeping suspicion that The Others' time is indeed now. With The Libertines officially defunct, there's a rather large cultural void marked "Hearts And Minds Of The Nation's Yoof" needing filling, and with Franz Ferdinand a shade too arch and Razorlight a shade too contrived, you suspect that this may just be the album to do it.
It's certainly constructed that way. There's nothing too complex or alienating about anything on this record, it is lowest common denominator rock'n'roll painted in broad primary coloured brushstrokes and peppered not with fudged poetry or clever turns of phrase, bit with stark, intentionally-unsubtle slogans. What The Ordinary Boys spent a whole album's worth of fannying about trying to say in mixed metaphors and similes, Masters nails in one with the opening lyrical gambit of 'Lackey'. Sounding like John Lydon gargling piss and razorblades, he snarls, "I don't wanna be a lackey in a job that doesn't pay/I don't wanna have to listen to you today/I don't wanna sell my soul to the man today/I don't wanna throw it all away". The facts that the chorus is made up entirely of the phrase "Chica-Chica-Chicaaaaaoooow!" and the singer couldn't carry a tune with a forklift simply add to the overwhelming punkness of it all.
It's a trick that's repeated on the Blur-esque frenzy of 'William' and the weirdly sentimental 'Almanac'. It's bewilderingly simple, relentlessly effective, and yes, you and your mates could do it yourselves. That's the whole point after all.
Class dissention is as much a part of The Others' ethos as Class As, and it predictably plays a pretty huge role on the record. That particular can of worms is still squirming but, no matter what you make of Dominic's opinion of the middle class and its irrelevance to anything The Others do, it's hard not to get caught up in the sheer fury and bluster of the quiet-loud-fucking-apocalyptic-quiet-again construct of 'This Is For The Poor' or the demented rockabilly bass rumble of 'Psychovison', even if Daddy's got the jag waiting outside to pick you up after the gig's finished. Like Oasis before them The Others both represent vindication for those fans whose mums genuinely"dealt from a terraced house", and provide a sense of slummed romance for those who aren't very sure what a terraced house actually is.
Yet for all the snarling and class-conscious teeth-gnashing - and believe us, being a middle class fan of The Others is as about as masochistic a pastime as you can get - the simple fact is that by the end of the year, these songs will no longer be the exclusive property of The Poor TM. After all, it's the middle-class kids who are in most dire need of The Others' bilious punk rock; at least the poor kids don't have Keane fighting their corner.
Yet it's not all sledgehammer sloganeering; this album is also a shameless tugger of heartstrings, from the longing, Cure-esque bass hooks and tales owner-fatal over-indulgence of 'How I Nearly lost You' - "I put my fingers on your wrist to check your pulse to see if you're alive" - to the awwww-inspiring assertion on 'Johan' that "I still love you to bits/Despite the things you do". Then there's 'Community 853', the band's heartfelt tribute to their fanatical followers. Its juddering new-wave guitars and nagging melody provide one of the album's highlights but when Dominic sings, "I'm not looking for a leader/I hate the trendy crowd/We're a rag-bag collective/I like that way for now", you can't help but pretend there's something in your eye; even the most naive of fans must surely know that he won't be able to answer 120 text messages a day forever.
The album ends with 'Darren, Daniel, Dave', a black dirge dedicated to three friends of Dominic who did too much, too young and "are all dead now". In that first interview way back in May, its author confessed to us that he was terrified of being the next alliterative addition to that macabre list. The album's mere existence is proof that someone upstairs had different things in mind for Dominic Masters. That it's as good as it is serves to illustrate that even in this day and age, there are still rock'n'roll bands whose hands are worth placing our life in. 8/10
by Barry Nicolson
