Product 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.

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: #5025 in Music
• Released on: 1992-10-06
• 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

Customer Reviews

There's no 'sitting on the fence' with this album.....
The best of northern music on one disc. They have their own sound and their own beat. They could never be mistaken for another group. Paul and his group make this album deliciously addictive thanks to the lyrical content, subject and originality. One listen to his voice and you will play this album over and over again.

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 tell 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.