How Johnny Marr brought the best out of The Cribs
In 2007, The Cribs were the biggest cult band in Britain. That year’s masterpiece, Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever, had managed to package everything that made them one of the most exciting, raucous punk bands in the country and convert it all into mainstream success. They even had a single in the top 20 in the form of the (sort of) title track, ‘Men’s Needs’. At a time when British indie bands were surging to the top of the charts, it didn’t seem that out of pocket to suggest that The Cribs could join them after Men’s Needs primed them so perfectly.
Granted, they were a lot more raucous and rowdy than the likes of Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs and the Arctic Monkeys. In 2006, frontman Ryan Jarman had accidentally stabbed himself in the back by jumping onto a table at the NME awards and landing on a glass jar, which is to say nothing of the myriad of ways he’d nearly died at his own concerts. Their music was just as ragged as the band was, too, their earworm choruses and deceptively brilliant songwriting buried under mountains of distorted guitar and strangled vocals.
The truth was that The Cribs had less to do with British indie rock than American punk rock. Theirs is a band more in the lineage of Sonic Youth and The Replacements than Razorlight and The Kooks. However, at the end of their biggest UK tour to date, the NME Awards tour 2008, the band started bringing out a special guest for their finales that signposted their next direction. One that saw them finally throw their hands up and start acting like an actual British indie band.
For two songs at the end of the set, they were joined by The Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr. At the NME tour, it was for a cover of Marr’s old band’s ‘Panic’, and for a spirited strut through Men’s Needs’… high point, ‘Moving Pictures’. Shortly after the tour finished, however, the band announced that Marr would actually join the band full-time.
How did Johnny Marr join The Cribs?
Behind the scenes, bassist and co-frontman Gary Jarman had left his native Wakefield to live in Portland, Oregon, in the United States. Marr, a few years prior to joining The Cribs, had relocated to Portland himself when he joined US indie rock legends Modest Mouse. The two of them started jamming together and intended originally for their partnership to result in a joint EP. However, the sessions went so well that the idea morphed into a whole album.
The Cribs’ most complete album and (whisper it) possibly their best is 2009’s Ignore the Ignorant. The stately chime of Marr’s guitar brings a new cohesion to the band that hadn’t been heard in any of the three previous records. The likes of ‘We Share the Same Skies’, ‘Last Year’s Snow’, and lead single ‘Cheat On Me’, showing the entirety of British indie rock that you could sharpen your hooks and lose the grit while also retaining your integrity.
That’s not to say that the band have settled into a happy middle ground. Frantic opener, ‘We Were Aborted’ is a scrapping indie-punk banger that still goes off like a firebomb in the mosh pit of any Cribs gig to this day. ‘City of Bugs’ is the other end of the spectrum, a track that takes the scale of Men’s Needs‘ art-rock epic ‘Be Safe’ and adds melancholic poetry to it that ages it better than Lee Ranaldo’s sixth-form cynicism.
So, a fantastic new album that would sound amazing in arenas. British rock legend by their side. A back catalogue of hits beloved by legions of indie kids. The stage seemed set for a mainstream breakthrough…that didn’t come. In the end, The Cribs were just still a little too jagged for the mainstream. What the album did do, though, was certify them as what they’d always been, cult act lifers who will always have an audience.
At a time when a number of their peers have reared their heads to “celebrate” the 20th anniversary of their debuts, The Cribs are a band that absolutely don’t have to do that. They’re still one of the most exciting, beloved outfits in the UK who never went away, and that came from the strength of records like Ignore the Ignorant.
