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The Boo Radleys

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The Boo Radleys
Origin	Wallasey, England
Genre(s)	Alternative rock Shoegazing Britpop Noise pop Dream pop
Years active	1988 – 1999
Label(s)	Creation Rough Trade Records
Members
Sice Martin Carr Timothy Brown Steve Hewitt Rob Cieka

The Boo Radleys were a British alternative rock band of the 1990s who were associated with the shoegazing and Britpop movements. They were formed in Wallasey, England in 1988, with singer/guitarist Sice, guitarist/songwriter Martin Carr, bassist Timothy Brown and drummer Steve Hewitt. Shortly after the release of their first album, Hewitt was replaced by Rob Cieka. The band split in 1999.

1 Band name
2 Beginnings
3 Wake Up! and later albums
4 Disbandment
5 Discography
- 5.1 EPs and singles
- 5.2 Albums
6 External links

Band name

The band is named after a character in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. In the book, Boo Radley is a misunderstood recluse.

Beginnings

In 1990, the band's first album Ichabod and I was released on a small British indie label, Action Records. It was similar in style to much of the then-popular shoegazing sub-genre, and bore the influence of My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur Jr. Although not a commercial success, this release brought the band to the attention of Rough Trade Records, to whom they signed. Around this time, Hewitt was replaced on drums by Rob Cieka. Almost immediately after the release of the Every Heaven EP in 1991, Rough Trade collapsed and the Boo Radleys were signed by Alan McGee's Creation Records. Their first release for Creation was Everything's Alright Forever in 1992, which was the first step in a move away from the shoegazing sound. That development in their sound was to be fully realised on their first album for Creation, Giant Steps (1993). The album takes its title from a song by jazz musician John Coltrane, of whom Martin Carr is a fan. Carr said the album "was a step away from the MBV sound into using more instruments and less conventional arrangements." The record was well-received by critics, and was awarded 9/10 by the influential weekly music magazine NME, which wrote:

It's an intentional masterpiece, a throw-everything-at-the-wall bric-a-brac of sounds, colours and stolen ideas. That The Boo Radleys (of all people!) have decided to accept their own challenge and create a record as diverse and boundary-bending as this is, at first glance, staggering. Isn't this the job of the U2s and the leisured idols of rock, unable to do anything without the tacit approval of history? Fortunately not. The Boo Radleys are sifting through time (the mid-'60s, mostly) and conjuring up something that's as cut-up and ambitious as anything you'd care to mention.

Giant Steps placed second to Debut by Björk in the 1993 NME album of the year list, voted by the paper's contributors, although it came in first place in the subsequent NME readers' poll. The now-defunct Select magazine declared Giant Steps their album of the year for 1993.

Wake Up! and later albums

Despite such critical acclaim and a large cult fanbase, the Boo Radleys were still largely unknown to the general public by the time the Britpop phenomenon broke into the mainstream in 1995. This changed when the band released the musically (but not lyrically) upbeat single "Wake Up Boo!" in the summer of that year. It made the UK chart top 10, and has been used extensively as background music on television. "Wake Up Boo!" remained on the chart for two months, by far the band's longest run for any of its singles. (With a three-week stint on the chart, the Boo Radleys' followup release, "Find the Answer Within," was the band's only other single to chart for more than 2 weeks.) Their fourth album Wake Up! (1995), from which both singles were taken, was close in tone to much of the catchy, melodic, Beatles inspired British pop of the time. That said, many tracks featured unusual arrangements and relatively complex songwriting, and the subject matter of the album was quite dark compared to the upbeat nature of the music. The group came to be seen as a Britpop band, which, like most bands at that time, they resented. Interviewed in 2005 by the BBC, Martin Carr said:

"I tried to have nothing to do with what was being called Britpop. Our whole career was spent trying not to 'fit in'. We just carried on doing what we had been doing. I didn't like most of the new bands or the flag-waving. I didn't like New Labour or idolise Paul Weller and I hated media-generated movements within music."

In 1996, Carr and the Boo Radleys released their fifth album C'mon Kids. This album was perceived as deliberate attempt by the band to sabotage their mainstream success, as it featured more experimental sounds and was far less successful than 'Wake Up!'. However, this was not the intention of the band as explained by Sice in an interview in 2005:

"We didn't want to scare away the hit-kids, we wanted to take them with us to somewhere that we'd not been before. All we wanted to do was make a different type of album than Wake Up... All we wanted to do was try something new - to keep ourselves fresh and interested. We were very surprised to find that it was seen as a deliberate attempt to scare away newly created fans. That would have been an extremely foolish thing to do."

The Boo Radleys' final album was 1998's Kingsize, which again was a critical rather than commercial success. The band returned somewhat to the more mainstream sound of 'Wake Up!' but also were influenced in places by soul music, hip hop and dance music. One single was released from the album 'Free Huey!'. The title track was due to have been released as a second single but the band decided to split not long before this was due for release. A career-spanning compilation, Find The Way Out, was released in 2005 featuring songs chosen by the band and a further compilation 'The Best of the Boo Radleys' was released in 2007, this time with out input from the band.

The Boo Radleys - Wake Up Boo! excerpt Image:Boo Radleys - Wake Up Boo excerpt.ogg

An excerpt from Wake Up Boo!

Problems listening to the file? See media help.

Disbandment

The Boo Radleys disbanded in early 1999. Bassist Timothy Brown can now be found teaching Information Technology (ICT) at St Louis Grammar School, Kilkeel, in Northern Ireland. Under the name Bravecaptain, Martin Carr has since released six albums, including The Fingertip Saint Sessions Volume 1, Go With Yourself, Advertisements for Myself (2002) and All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2004). His most recent album was titled Distractions and is available for free download from his website. Carr has since announced that he will be retiring the Bravecaptain name to work on new projects but these will not include reforming the Boo Radleys. Drummer Rob Cieka had earlier studied at Drumtech in London. He is now a member of Domino Bones the band of Bez of the Happy Mondays Sice walked away from music for several years after the split but following a guest vocal on Bravecaptain's All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace and also two songs with the Japanese musician Ryo Matsui's solo project, Meister, and has recently form a new band called Paperlung. The new band features Sice on vocals, Simon Gardiner on bass, Ben Datlen on guitar and Guillaume Jambel of Transcargo on drums. They played their first gig in November 2005 at The Bull and Gate in Kentish Town, London. To date the band have released two singles, 'The Days That God Sold You' and 'Do What Thou Wilt'. They have also recorded and album which is currently awaiting release by Shifty Disco in the UK.