Day 49: "Becoming X" - Sneaker Pimps (1996)

Of all the albums in this particular column of the pile, this is the one so far I have been most excited to be reminded that it exists and that I still own it.  There have been bands I've written about that I like more before now, there have been albums already reviewed which are loaded with more meaning.  When I saw this was coming up today, I said "Oh shit, I'd forgotten about this album, I'm so psyched to listen to it again".  Spoilers, this album still rules.

Listen to me here.  No, seriously this time, if you've not heard this album before, listen to it.

There's a reason I'm a statistician by trade and not an expert music critic.  Back in the mid-nineties, when the wave of trip-hop was washing over the alternative music fans of the nation, I would have given you great odds on a bet that this band were going to be the next big thing and this album would be number one for a zillion weeks in a row.  Instead, it was a big underground success, then the band fired their vocalist who (in my opinion) defined the sound of this album, released a massively unpopular second album and sunk into pop obscurity.

It's baffling to me how quickly this fell apart.  Some cursory checking seems to indicate that Kelli Dayton found touring super-stressful which contributed to the band replacing her, but I remember listening to "Splinter" (the Kelli-free follow up album) and thinking "Oh god, what have you done".  So, despite there being three albums in the Sneaker Pimps discography, I'm gonna go ahead and declare that this is the only one that counts.  Don't @ me, late-era Sneaker Pimps fans.

While I've been listening back to it (and full disclosure, I've listened to this album through three times today), I've been trying to piece together the provenance of it.  Going back to first principles, it's probably the fault of BBC2 that I own this album.  In 1994 I was 18 and living in the converted attic room of my parents house.  It was large, generally a mess (as I've mentioned before, I will own up to being a terrible slob), and littered with CD, tapes, and electronic gizmos, including my own TV and antenna so I could watch TV while having to interact with precisely zero members of my family for long periods of time, which was often the ideal number.

I have a strong recollection of BBC advertising around that time a cult tv and sci-fi evening.  It's crazy to me now that I can't remember anything about any of the content of that festival of television apart from the fact that for the weeks running up to it, the BBC trails used "Mysterons" by Portishead as the music on the trailer.  Like a lot of people at the time, I suspect, I thought "Wow, that's unusual and cool, I should probably find out where that music is from".  And thus was born (at least for me), the rise of Trip-Hop in the mid-90's.

Almost independently of each other, my little social circle all sought out, purchased, and shared some trip hop album over the next couple of years.  I remember buying Dummy and Portishead's Self-titled albums on tape and copying them for nearly everyone I knew.  Dave in turn copied me DJ Shadow's "Endtroducing...".  Hado made me a copy of Massive Attack's "Mezzanine".  And I think, though I'm fuzzy on the details here, that D was responsible for finding and sharing the Sneaker Pimps with the group.  Something in the back of my head certainly vaguely associates this album with being at his parents house, and I'm certain that I didn't come across them myself, but in all honesty I can't summon up the recollection coherently enough to talk other than in vague generalities.  I'll have to talk to D at some point and see whether he has any better memory of it than I do.

It's strange that I don't associate any of the songs on this album with events or people individually.  I know "6 Underground" and "Spin Spin Sugar" were released as singles, but I don't think I've ever really heard any of the songs from this album in any other context than putting the album on an listening to it as a complete piece of work.  It's like it appeared, fully formed, in my record collection, and exists as such a coherent entity as an album that it's the kind of thing where when I listen to it in the car, if I arrive where I was going before the album ends and only have a song or two left, I'll sit outside in my car and let the album finish rather than churlishly stopping the album before it's complete.

I'm listening to it again for the fourth time today right now.

It kind of makes me sad.  Sad that this album had such potential, I thought it was going to be so big, and somehow, through circumstances and personalities and decisions which I am sure all made sense at the time, this trio of musicians were never able to parlay what I think is a wonderful album into a career as musical legends.  It makes me sad that this exists alone as a testament to how a great album always leaves me wanting more, and knowing in this case I will never get it.

I'll console myself with my fourth listen through of the day, and appreciate it for what it is, not what could have been.