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Formerly with 90s indie act The Auteurs, then art-pop trio Black Box Recorder, has long enjoyed journeying off-piste. A misanthropic provocateur whose 2009 memoir ruffled feathers, he’s written songs about English motorways, 70s pop act The Rubettes, and a badger named Nick Lowe. But his sixth solo album was outré even by his standards.
The trippy, tragicomic is a concept LP celebrating the tough, marginalised lives of such famed British grapplers as Kendo Nagasaki, Giant Haystacks and Catweazle. “I think it would have taken a lot of courage for Catweazle – who was really called Gary Cooper and from Doncaster – to assume that character and make himself a laughing stock,” Haines told this writer on its release in 2011. “I chose to imbue the song with some sadness that might be associated with that.
” Haines had watched wrestling on telly with his dad as a kid. He originally envisaged as a TV drama, but ended up making an album in his front room instead. He had old grapple footage playing silently in the background while he recorded his sinister and/or blackly comic vignettes.
All of them view wrestling’s glory days through the distorting, transporting lens of psychedelia, with Haines utilising the sounds of children’s toys alongside synthesised strings and acoustic and electric guitars. By making those worlds collide he created something very progressive and very unique Opener sets the troubling tone, with Haines singing, ‘ .’ The song sees him add a lysergic twist to the true story of wrestler Les Kellett retiring to run an infamous Bradford transport café called The Terminus.
“I thought maybe Les could be like a Sufi dispensing the sacrament to younger wrestlers from his thousand-trip bag,” Haines said. “I imagined Rollerball Rocco coming to seek knowledge over this awful food in this awful setting.” Sign up below to get the latest from Prog, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox! Although lasts just 30 minutes, boy does it take you somewhere.
For all its flights of fancy it’s not ironic; rather it finds Haines rooting for the hard-grafting, often veteran grapplers whose mysterious lives were regularly beset by injury. “The reality is that wrestling had very little to do with psychedelia or music,” Haines explained; but by making those worlds collide he created something very progressive and very unique. Nice, too, that, in an oblique nod to artist Peter Blake getting Kendo Nagasaki to sit for him, Haines painted 12 acrylics of his favourite wrestlers for the Grapple Calendar, which accompanied the LP’s physical release.
James McNair grew up in East Kilbride, Scotland, lived and worked in London for 30 years, and now resides in Whitley Bay, where life is less glamorous, but also cheaper and more breathable. He has written for , , , , , , , , and , among other outlets. His first foray into print was a review of Yum Yum Thai restaurant in Stoke Newington, and in many ways it’s been downhill ever since.
His favourite Prog bands are Focus and Pavlov’s Dog and he only ever sits down to write atop a Persian rug gifted to him by a former ELP roadie. “One of the most singular, unique and influential catalogues in music history.” Every Talk Talk album ranked from worst to best Order your limited edition Pure Reason Revolution x Prog bundle – featuring a signed lyric sheet and art print! Will Oasis release a new album as part of their comeback? According to Liam, it's "already finished".
