Against the backdrop of 90s Britpop,
Mansun always seemed like a weird bunch. Their 1997 debut album Attack Of The Grey Lantern was undoubtedly one of the most unusual records to ever reach the number 1 spot. But it's 1998 follow-up 'Six' baffled even the most open-minded of critics, and probably offloaded a lot of the band's more pop-inclined fans.Following the beautifully bleak 'Legacy' and post-punk riot 'Being A Girl' (which addressed the issue of toxic masculinity decades before many others), and without many other chart-friendly contenders for singles, the Chester band released the storming 'Negative' as the third single from 'Six'.
Out of all the tracks from the LP, 'Negative' is the one that immediately stands out in terms of brilliant guitar work, as Dominic Chad's sky high notes and spiralling riffs add to a stubborn tantrum of a rhythm, while Paul Draper's dynamic vocals increase the song's darkly rousing power.
In a blog a few years ago, Draper commented that "The backing track was worked out without me involved, at the legendary Olympic Studios. I edited it into shape and played the rhythm guitar on the chorus. We captured the live sound of the band for this track. I came up with a top line melody over the top and got the lyrics from my notebook.
I'd keep a record of my daily activities in a notebook to get song ideas from. This was about the day I went for a mortgage application. 'Negative' is about taking a blood test for a mortgage application. I loved this lyric, nobody knew what it was about. Fucking hilarious being at Brixton Academy singing about a mortgage application with loads of kids in black eyeliner going apeshit, awesome! We all got mortgages after the first album and you had to do a blood test as part of the mortgage application. It was using the word negative as a positive. It's secretly an uplifting song but sounds really dark, pretty simple really, sort of wrong foots the listener, and nobody knew. The 'I look downwards' bit was just about reading the forms, and getting the OK, all good stuff."Draper told XS Noize: "The idea was to do enough material to make an album where we could have some relatively straight forward pop songs in case it all went tits up with ‘Six’, the thing is it did go all tits up with ‘Six’ or I wouldn’t be here now otherwise (laughs). That other album was made at the same time, we didn’t come back later and just throw together the B sides, it was all done together. We had been piecing together the ‘Six’ project and then we would come off it for a day and record those songs. The very first one we did was ‘King of Beauty‘ and I just did it and I thought 'I don’t want to do another album of these pop songs'. So the second thing we did was the song ‘Six‘, which was a crazy idea really because everyone said as an artist you have to be original and don’t copy any other styles of music, get your own style. I think Mansun really did have its own sound on the first album, but me just the way I thought and my obtuse view of making records, I thought “okay fuck that! I’m going to do a record that goes through six different styles of music and back to the start and see if I can do it“,so it was just an exercise in doing that, but that’s all it was really. I was just trying to piss off the record company or the managers and the rest of the band (laughs)."
The first CD single featured the introspective atmospheres of the shadowy 'When The Wind Blows', where a haunting melody, stark piano notes and more sublime guitar sounds deliver something with more hit potential than anything on 'Six'. Draper said: "'When the Wind Blows' was going to be part of my cartoon song 'Shotgun', but evolved into its own song. It's about the animated film of the same name. The recording misses a big dirty guitar on the chorus but I didn't have enough time to fully finish it." The film in question had a theme tune by David Bowie, one of Mansun's biggest musical influences. On 'King Of Beauty', opening acoustic chords and bleak melancholy make way for the dirty riffage and sneering attitude of its chorus. There are some interesting electronics 3 minutes in, and the track is brilliantly produced like the rest of Six and the B sides that accompanied the singles from it. According to Draper, "This song is about someone in a band... but not myself."
About the track, Darper said: "This was me trying to do a Prince stylee track and get away with it, which is virtually impossible if you're white and from Liverpool... I did it with my LINN drum machine originally, which is how Prince made all his good records.'. Andie played over the Linn Drum machine patterns that run through the track and played some cool hi hats and beats especially at the end. I play all the keyboards and the synth bass line. Chad overdubbed a single note lead line as usual onto the song thru a Lovetone 'Big Cheese' pedal. I can't remember who played the zither on the bridges..."
The group's next single would be a less maverick re-recording of 'Six''s mad title track. After their third album 'Little Kix', aborted sessions for a fourth Mansun record resulted in the band splitting in 2003. Following a number of harrowing experiences, Paul Draper would finally re-emerge years later in 2016 with long awaited solo material, releasing his debut album 'Spooky Action' in 2017. This year he has been playing Attack Of The Grey Lantern in full during a highly successful UK tour, and next month in November will play a series of intimate acoustic shows. The gigs will feature Mansun classics, solo tracks and new material from his upcoming second solo LP.
As part of an ongoing series of reissues, 'Six' will be released as a deluxe edition next year in a variety of formats, and Paul Draper is planning to play the album in full.