The Boo Radleys add to their strong return.
It’s kind of old school, but also kind of true: they say the best way to stay successful in the music business is to know your audience – and more importantly know their limits.
This philosophy hasn’t for example stopped Alex Turner presenting Arctic Monkeys fans with not one but two albums of mind-scrambling tunes for lounge lizards everywhere, or the grumpy old man of Britpop Noel Gallagher experimenting with electronica.
Challenging? Well, yes. But they’re both of a stature where such dalliances mean less in the big picture, whilst for most it’s still best to pick a lane and stay in it for their career’s sake.
In this regard The Boo Radleys‘ problems were quite different, which was half the problem itself. The first was called Wake Up Boo! – the brassy pop single whose omnipresence suddenly lumped them in with the Toploader/Dodgy crowd, while the second was Giant Steps, the critically acclaimed album which had preceded it, one which owed more to Belle And Sebastian and My Bloody Valentine than cheesy daytime radio fodder.
With those juxtaposing things as their public face, finding a true audience connection was always going to be difficult, so much so that they eventually split in 1998.
Whilst Wake Up Boo! has been appearing on compilations regularly ever since and writer Martin Carr pursued a modest solo career, it wasn’t until 2021 the now-trio finally re-emerged with the four track EP A Full Syringe And Memories Of You, a toe in the water which was followed by the album Keep On With Falling last year.
Wisely not attempting to recreate the weight of Giant Steps, Keep On… was a bittersweet record which stood up close to love and loss without ever feeling self-indulgent. Factually entitled, The Boo Radleys’ eighth studio album Eight seems like a consolidation of that, further output coming via a period of renewed inspiration after two decades plus in the wilderness.
Having found a groove again, refinements here though are of the ‘not broke don’t fix it’ variety. Opener Seeker’s choppy rock lite buzz and energetic horns strand them somewhere between the centuries sound wise but in a pleasing way, whilst the organ led Skeleton Woman offers some warmth and substance.
As can be the case with grown up songwriters, overt politics is kept to a minimum, such that Now That’s What I Call Obscene – according to The Boo Radleys’ vocalist Sice ‘a fury filled rant against the hypocrisy of ideologies and religions’ – is pacifist by nature whilst closer How Was I To Know is a thudding stomp about middle aged dalliances with booze.
The accumulated nous however is generally used to more constructive effect, here Sorrow (I Just Want To Be Free) is a lament that makes regret feel harmonious, whilst Sometimes I Sleep’s Britpop ephemera nods vividly towards Ocean Colour Scene.
The album’s peak though is neither bombastic or overly familiar, the trippy, orchestrated psych-pop of Swift’s Requiem a moment on which The Boo Radleys eclipse both the distant and more recent pasts. Elevated against the rest, it’s under-served by a scant three minutes and change running time, but augurs well for a slight change in future direction if that’s considered necessary.
Thirty years after Giant Steps and a couple back in the game, with Eight and its predecessor it seems that The Boo Radleys have at last found a happy space.
As their most defining work creeps back upon them however, whether they’ll choose to stay in it is a question only they can answer.
