Track Listing

1. Happy Hour
2. Get Up Off Our Knees
3. Flag Day
4. Anxious
5. Reverend's Revenge
6. Sitting On A Fence
7. Sheep
8. Over There
9. Think For A Minute
10. We're Not Deep
11. Lean On Me
12. Freedom
13. I'll Be Your Shelter (Just Like A Shelter)
14. People Get Ready
15. The Mighty Ship
16. He Aint Heavy,He's My Brother

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3644 in Music
• Released on: 2007-08-06
• Number of discs: 1

From Amazon.com
The band whose alumni went on to both the Beautiful South and (improbably) Fatboy Slim was a lot more like the former. Paul Heaton's laconic songs are nicely groomed and innocuous-sounding, with a happy jangle and rich harmonies (the group's interest in gospel extends to technique as well as sentiment), but there is a dryly vicious sense of humor lurking inside them--"Sheep" flips a familiar religious image on its back and leaves its legs waving in the air. London 0 Hull 4, the band's first album, is full of cheerful, taut little tunes about failures of the spirit, barstool sexism, and thermonuclear Armageddon--not to mention love of humanity, which underscored the fact that they weren't just nihilists, they actually cared. --Douglas Wolk

CD Description
With their music far too rooted in R&B, the Housemartins were never "officially" part of the C86 movement (named after a British music magazine's influential 1986 compilation album that featured the Wedding Present, Wolfhounds, Primal Scream, and others). But their jangling guitars, the social criticism of their lyrics, and their gleefully cynical outlook were fully in line with the C86-ers. The debut LONDON 0 HULL 4 (1986) is chock-full of catchy tunes, great lyrics, and Paul Heaton's exceptional vocals. This is one of the great records of the '80s.
Standouts include the chipper "Get up off Our Knees", carried on a bright acoustic-guitar line and choral-type backing vocals, "Think For a Minute", a wistful track featuring Heaton's falsetto vocals, the percussion-and-bass-driven "We're Not Deep" (complete with sing-along "ba ba baba ba"s), and "The Mighty Ship", a hyper harmonica instrumental. The album's trio of gospel standards is also of note. A staggeringly brilliant take on Luther Ingram's "I'll Be Your Shelter" features Heaton's voice, alternately growling and soaring, a barreling piano, and a full-on choral backing. Start to finish, this record is a masterpiece.

Customer Reviews

Now That's What I Call Perfect Pop
It amazes me that in all of the End of the Century polls the music press and the like have conducted this album has never been mentioned.

It is full of catchy tunes, intelligent lyrics, humour, a splash of politics, but mainly it's the sheer excellence and beauty of these finely polished 3 minute masterpieces including the magnificent "Happy Hour", the poignant "Flag Day" and the original version of my own favourite "Think For A Minute".

Paul Heaton's mastery of the lyric shines through on this album and it's worth buying for the hilariously 80's photo of Norman "Fatboy Slim" Cook on the inlay card!

It's like a Northern drug this Housemartins lark! One listen and you're hooked!

Party, party politics of the ugly fame.....
The year is I986, we're talking miners, we're talking Thatcher, we're talking a shortarse northern guy preaching record industry nationalisation - behold, if you will,the world of the Housemartins. Their brand of jangle pop is still felt in indie circles (just listen to Lucksmiths or Moxy Fruvous) and with good reason. Happy Hour is a euphoric piece of pop fluff until the penny drops and we're let into the eccentric and frankly exhausting pysche of P.D Heaton, draped in delicous harmonies and Smiths-esque guitar. The lyrics lack the same creativity as later Beautiful South efforts (in fairness, they had less to work with, the album is a socialist propaganda showcase to make Rage Against The Machine blush) but Heaton's vocal is in its prime. As a result, the radically different gospel and a cappella segment isn't half as cringeworthy as it should have been, with a soaring 'Just Like A Shelter' a personal highlight. Initially fast-paced with a tongue-in-cheek soulful climbdown, London 0 Hull 4 is an essential album for anybody who suspected the 80s had some substance under the gloss.

Wag you finger 'till your fingers sore..
Paul Heaton and Norman Cook have certainly followed very different paths since the glory days of this album and "The People Who.." For me neither of them have ever reproduced the energy and brilliance of these two seminal LP's. Even the Fat Boy with his super-popular sing-a-long-a dance music has never come close to emulating the raw exuberance of say "Get up off our knees" and has certainly never said anything as interesting. Paul Heaton's Beautiful South produced some nice ironic pop songs but surely he was at his best when belligerently battering the apathetic majority on songs like "Sheep: and "Sitting on a Fence" Never, in my opinion, has a band so overtly political, produced so many top tunes. Recently Paul has gone solo. I haven't heard any of his stuff yet but I hope he's gone back to his roots. Even better than that. Any chance of reforming just for a few gigs? London O Hull 4 is without doubt one of the albums of the eighties. Get it.