It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 172 Oldfield Youth Club - The Hanworth Are Coming

 

I do love bands that start their albums with anthems about themselves. Intended to be sung on football terraces. I also love albums with self written reviews on stickers attached to record sleeves. Written by people like you  or record company pluggers, also a bit like you, that wish to draw you into their universes. Hoping to change you. Forever. Or at least until next Thursday. 

A couple of weeks back I was browsing through the racks. In the Beatbox Record Shop which lies directly across the road from my flat in Central Newcastle. A record took my fancy. Largely because of the feverish, faintly rabid review of it on the sticker attache to its sleeve.. The Hanworth Are Coming, the debut album by Oldworth Youth Club. 

The Go Betweens. Vic Godard's Subway Sect were mentioned as fellow travellers. I didn't really need to read the rest. I knew I'd enjoy the record without bothering to do so. I was their natural constituent.

Now I'm listening to the record on a Friday morning in my parents house in Canterbury and writing about it for you. It's a very English record despite its nods to McLennan, Forster, Morrison and Vickers. Particularly Forster at his most arch I'd say. But the record itself is more English than Australian. It has that essentially English sense of underachievement to it.

For this is a record which comes out aiming itself first and foremost at people who stiill haven't quite recovered from the first time they heard Another Girl, Another Planet. Critics and the type of people who attend Indie gigs in the damp upstairs rooms of small pubs. An album which clearly has no intention of scaling the upper reaches of national charts. That would be undignified. Being Number One in its own head in its own chart will clearly always be more than enough.

Oldfield Youth Club I imagine would be more than happy if Marc Riley played their songs a few times on his evening shows. If he invited them in to record a session they would probably have kittens. What more could they want? Luke Haines turning up unexpectantly at one of their gigs possibly. Nodding appreciatively in his shades at the lip of the stage in his shades.

Oldfield Youth Club are the kind of people you know have record collections and bookshelves like yours. Lined with Kinks albums and well thumbed Penguin Classics. Made by people who would be wonderful company to drain a couple of pints with at a downtown microbrewery surrounded by people like you. Sometimes this is enough. Oh btw I love the record. For its organ sound. For its backing vocals. And the way it speaks to the likes of me about my life and tastes. Lifestyle choices.