Track Listing

1. Chad Who Loved Me
2. Mansun's Only Love Song
3. Taxloss
4. You Who Do You Hate
5. Wide Open Space
6. Stripper Vicar
7. Disgusting
8. She Makes My Nose Bleed
9. Naked Twister
10. Egg Shaped Fred
11. Dark Mavis
12. Open Letter To The Lyrical Trainspotter

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14928 in Music
• Released on: 1997-02-17
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
Mansun--whose records regularly go Top 10 in the UK, whose tours sell out effortlessly, but whose lead singer most people would be hard-pressed to name--are impossible to figure out; one gets the impression they prefer things that way. In successive photo shoots, they've been known to appear as safety-pinned punks, eyelinered New Romantics and Adidas-clad lads just to mess with people's perceptions, and never feature in their own videos.

Led by singer Paul Draper and guitarist Dominic Chad, Mansun arrived in 1996 straight outta Chester. While their peers were worshipping at the altar of Lennon, Marriott and Weller, Mansun were name-checking such off-limits influences as Duran Duran, Talk Talk, the Associates, Simple Minds and ABC. It's this blatant disregard for indie credibility that allowed Mansun to make such an ambitious, astonishingly opulent debut album. Attack Of The Grey Lantern creates a lucid musical narcosis, a waking dream, all multi-layered guitars and spooky samples: the mewing of drowning cats, the tolling of submerged church bells, WW2 air raid sirens (smoothed and airbrushed to sound like whalesong), ghostly operatic tenors, oceanic strings, and the Fahrenheit 451 crackle of burning paper (money? books? bibles?). It's almost--whisper it--a CONCEPT album. The titular Grey Lantern is a superhero exposing the moral hypocrisy of smalltown England, as exemplified by the irresistible "Stripper Vicar", the true story of a female friend, the daughter of a church minister, who found S&M apparatus in her father's wardrobe. A fantastic debut. --Simon Price

CD Description
The second wave of '90s Britpop starts here, typified by Mansun's thematic grandeur and glam-sized orchestral manoeuvers that first-wavers like Blur and Oasis intentionally left behind. Only the melodies remain grounded in the familiar UK rock tradition. Led by singer/songwriter Paul Draper, Mansun, while grounded in the good old guitar-bass-drums aesthetic, is all about sonic excess--imagine Queen with a punky attitude.
Guitars come in every imaginable form and texture, strings swirl all over, drum-machines echo live beats, synths blip with New Wave bravado, organs underpin nearly every melody. Hippo noises and church bells are simply the cherrieson a multi-track production sundae that is intensely calorie-heavy. Draper, meanwhile, struts around coolly cooing lyrics about an odd assortment of characters that belong in perverse short stories.

Customer Reviews

Best "Indie" album of the 90's
Before The Killer's, The Libertines, The Bravery et al, there wasn't much!
Throughout the 90's Oasis we're preaching the same boring nonsense, Supergrass made pop records and the Stereophonics bored the living day light out of me(and anybody else with a bit of common sense).
BUT, in 1997 there was one or two exeptional bands around (if you looked hard enough)-and one of those was the brilliant outcasts-Mansun.
They never really did fit in with the rest of the Brit-Pop garbage back then, but who cares?
"Attack Of The Grey Lantern" is simply one of the best and most accomplished albums i've ever heard.
As a 16 year old Guitarist in 1997-hearing this album was for me, a LIFE changer.
I'd never heard an album so daringly insperational, unique, diverse, honest and modest, and original.
"The Chad Who Loved Me", "Wide Open Space", "Mansun's Only Love Song" and "Taxloss" are my personal favorites.Paul Draper had one of the best voices i've ever heard...(Chris who?)
Forget what the fickle music press press had to say about this band.
Just listen to the album and tell me it isn't good!
A truely unforgetable listen

Pure Genius !
I hadn't even had the album for a week, but it almost instantly nestled itself into the position of being one of my all time favourite albums. I was familiar with the song Wide Open Space, and on its strength decided to buy the album. And not a moment too soon! Upon listening to the rest of the album I promptly forget about Wide Open Space and became absorbed in the other intriguing songs. Of course it's still brilliant, but with The Chad Who Loved Me as the opening track with its sumptuous strings and powerful chorus, it is quite understandable to do so.

And Stripper Vicar, has indeed, got to be one of the best crafted, 'soundtrack to the 90's' pop/rock song. It is dark, yet so bizarre and humorous. It's totally fascinating and enthralling; in fact, the whole album is. I entirely agree that there isn't a weak track present.

Some more of the album's highlights are the songs Taxloss, She Makes My Nose Bleed and Egg shaped Fred. They're all such strong songs with tunes/lyrics that are just impossible to dislodge ("We think you are stupid, we give you money because our assets are fluid"). The only difference is that, unlike many other catchy rock/pop songs, you actually WANT them to be stuck in your mind. Some of the tracks vaguely remind me of Blur, but far, far, better. Unlike Blur, they are deeper, more profound and generally more intelligent.

Combine catchy pop song tunes and choruses to strong guitar chords, then add a twist of bizarre wit, humour and irony, and you are getting close to having an idea of what this amazing album is like.

A 90s Classic
Amazing that this magnificent debut album should be so underrated as to be undiscovered country for so many people. It's a classic for so many reasons - as has been said, there isn't a weak track on the album. Most people remember Wide Open Space as a 90s anthem, as well as the other singles Taxloss and She Makes My Nose Bleed, but all the songs share the same quality, wit and bizarre sense of humour. Mansun's achievement is in making an album so full of catchy tunes and singalong choruses which is at the same time so eccentric, dark, hypnotic and surreal. Paul Draper has a superb voice, one moment singing angelically like a choirboy and the next belting out the loud and electrifying anthems elsewhere. The album is bursting with ideas and innovation, it flows through your head like a dream and you're guaranteed to find yourself singing different bits of it to yourself when you least expect to!

Attack of the Grey Lantern loosely tells the story of 'Mavis' and her father, a vicar who combines his respectable day-job with a kinky alter-ego as a stripper and drag queen, and who dies presumably as a result of his activities. The story carries it's own fascination from one fantastic song to the next - Stripper Vicar is quite simply one of the greatest songs of the 90s and tells the tale with hilarious lyrics ("I think he got suspended in his stockings and suspenders, and he's making wine from water while he dresses like his daughter, and we know that he's a rip off cos we've seen him with his kit off!") while elsewhere we hear poignant and beautiful songs such as Dark Mavis with it's soaring string section and sombre description of the funeral arrangements. The anthemic outro is done with great passion and feeling, before rejoining the majestic Bond-style piece of orchestral classical music that opened the first song. As it finishes you sit in awe, contemplating the brilliance of the album and the strange story it told...until the excellent, poppy hidden track kicks in and Draper reveals that "the lyrics aren't supposed to mean that much, they're just a vehicle for a lovely voice!" Brilliant.

If you've missed out on this unique gem of an album, put it right straightaway!