The New Fellas - 2005 - a look back

The Cribs

The New Fellas

Wichita

Released: Monday 20 June 2005

Many fans of The Cribs say this is easily their best album. The sound they were producing in 2005 was synonymous of The Cribs and that is for a good reason, one that is often the case. Good bands will often debut with a resonating first album and even the second album will excel, sounding similar to the first but still new. However, after the second album, bands often find it hard to be creative and to find that ingredient, as secret as the ingredients in Willy Wonka's confectionary, that amaze listeners so much. You could argue, then, that 'The New Fellas' is the last album of The Cribs's period of magic creativity, not to say that the following albums could not be as good.

The Cribs have been relatively prolific between 2004 when they released their first album, 'The Cribs', and 2009 when they released their most recent album, 'Ignore The Ignorant'. Nevertheless, their 2005 album, The New Fellas and The Cribs were such brilliant albums that the two years before their 2007 album, 'Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever', seemed like a lifetime. The Cribs' debut album was exceptional and it gave a massive leg-up to The New Fellas and allowed it to be recognised by the media and fans alike. In fact, the two albums could have probably been released as a combined mega-album as they came from a very similar musical place but The Cribs allowed The New Fellas to be more expressive, loud and daring. Songs like 'Hey Scenesters' and 'Mirror Kissers' display the belief garnered from such a successful first album.

Johnny Marr, who is now an honorary member of The Cribs, says his attention was caught by The Cribs, with Hey Scenesters: 'the thing that struck me straight away when I heard, Hey Scenesters, was the style of vocal delivery and the guitar playing'. He also said: 'it sounded really like someone who had listened to that New York - punk rock - guitar playing, but in the right way'.

The city/ party theme is seen in several songs in the album, such as, 'You're Gonna Lose Us'. Gary Jarman belts out, 'when I'm drunk I can be an hassle, but that doesn't mean I've got no class though', and in 'Things Aren't Gonna Change', with, 'well I've been drinking for days and I'm happy to say, that we've been leading you on so you'd do it our way'.

The New Fellas was an album that made The Cribs one of the most well-known and best-loved Indie bands in Britain and also guided them to a success that allowed them to adopt an ex-The Smiths legend. The Cribs have the style of a New York band but are unmistakably British. With the best of American and UK Indie injected in to the recipe, The New Fellas is an album which encapsulates Indie from 2005.