l-r Gary, Ryan and Ross Jarman
The Cribs last night released a statement confirming the rumours that had been circling for a while. Johnny Marr has left the band. I got a little excited about this.
Marr is a legend, a hero, and a genius. But for me his this didn’t cross from The Smiths to The Cribs. ‘Ignore The Ignorant’ is a great album, don’t get me wrong. But the Wakefield band had lost what made the The Cribs, The Cribs. The first three albums all had a certain rawness and raucous trait, that the fourth didn’t. They even took to singing instead of screaming. What’s that all about?
At live shows there were stories of people losing eyes, breaking legs and one girl almost died. None of that when Marr was playing. It was like the Jarmans had all grown up. No taking off shoes, stage diving, falling about on stage, knocking teeth out or falling onto a jar of flying saucers to be taken to hospital to have stitches, and then having to return again later to have kidneys stitched back together… It was as if they didn’t want to misbehave in front of Uncle Johnny, or have a life threatening accident again.
A blood soaked Ryan Jarman crowd surfs sometime in the past
Originally the idea was for Marr to continue as a permanent member of the band, they even went into the studio with Edwyn Collins and started to record sessions for the fifth album. But it wasn’t working. This lead to the first proper hiatus in the eight year history of the band.
At some point late last year, the brothers casually got back together without Marr, and things started to click. Johnny had begun work on a solo album, so they decided that it was the best time to part company.
Seems like they’re back to having fun. “We are really honestly loving being back together as just 3 brothers literally playing in the basement/garage again. Right now we are in Portland and demoing in Gary's basement and it feels so liberating. We have a bunch of new songs and are embracing the lo-fi again. It never was about fancy studios and LA and all that. We are back in our usual environment and feeling good about it. We've got everything we need.” Brilliant. Can’t wait to hear this new material, and get the old The Cribs back. It should be bloody marvellous.
