Soul Hooligan

Soul Hooligan’s Music Like Dirt is a lo-fi, red-eyed rumble of sweet beats,
fractured urban blues and off-kilter, no-filter hip-hop. It’s a wildly
varied record given cohesion by neat lines, short tunes, heart-tugging
hooks, and the kindly spectre of Stax. The band–Austin, Jim and Dave
Jay–met many years in Brentwood, Essex, a trio of musical obsessives
working in the half-light of London’s breakbeat scene. Each brings very
different talents to the table:

Austin is the professional producer who would rather tweak knobs for hard
house acts than take a 9 to 5 job. Dave is a former “paper pusher” with a
Justin Warfield-like rap style and a degree in politics. And Jim…well Jim
laughs a lot, and has a beatific, soulful voice that gives Music Like Dirt
much of its emotional depth. Oh, and they can all play loads of instruments.

Dave and Austin have been working on a guitars ‘n breakbeats project since
their days on rave label Suburban Base in the late ’80’s. All three spent
much of the ’90s immersed in London’s clubland, a period they recall in
“Numb In Both Lips.” “It’s about being in London, and being pissed off with
doing drugs,” Dave explains. “That existential moment where everything’s
passing you by, and you’re just like, what the fuck am I doing?” Possibly
much more damaging, however, was Jim’s stint playing keyboards with swing
band, The Big 6. Perilously popular, Jim played over 300 U.S. dates with
them, and helped contribute a track to The Truman Show soundtrack. Recalls
Jim, “It was a cover of T-Rex’s ’20th Century Boy,’ which we turned into
this rockabilly farce.” Jim on the other hand, was less than thrilled with
his former band. “We dressed like clowns,” he says.

Luckily, the need for a live band to go out and promote their first creation
as Soul Hooligan – the 1998 single, “Psychedelic Soul/ Sweet Pea”–saved Jim
from a lifetime of bad tailoring. Since then, all three have remained
dedicated to Hooligan life.

There’s a rough and ready, palpable soul to this idiosyncratic mix of
Badly Drawn Boy, Fatboy Slim, Portishead, Jimmy Radcliffe and Buffalo
Springfield. “The first thing we did was all soul music chopped up–being as
abusive as possible to things that shouldn’t have been abused,” smiles
Austin.

Nonetheless, a “Sweat Pea” remix was picked up for use on a UK TV ad.
“It’s the one,” recalls Dave, “with all the women jumping around and
throwing their hair about.” Austin shudders: “It’s not the coolest thing in
town is it?”

No, but then, that’s part of the Hooligans’ charm; they really don’t give a
fuck. Not least about people dubbing them ‘big beat,’ because of 21st
century beat-group souffles like “Ride The Pony.”

“If people think that we’re a bunch of wankers because there’s a big beat
tune on the album, then fuck ’em,” says Dave. “If the album is anything,
it’s unpretentious. If people have a problem because it doesn’t fit into
their categories of what is and isn’t cool, then they’ve gotta sort
themselves out.”

Basically, Music Like Dirt exists in its own world. The fact that it’s
emotional and musically complex, not to mention ambiguous, makes it
impossible to categorize. “‘Soul Searching,’” says Dave, “is probably the
only totally bleak one on the album.” But even Jim, whose sandpaper vocals
guide us through that dark night, disagrees. “The track,” he says, “has a
redemptive edge. Sometimes you sit there and think you’ve nothing inside,
nothing to give, and then you come out with what I’d call a classic. I love
that tune.”

Both “Addicted” and the moody, Bristolian blues of “Who’s To Say” are the
ambiguous upshot of Jim’s years of hedonism. “‘Addicted’ is about women,
drugs, everything.” Dave turns to him and says, “‘Who’s To Say’ was the
lyric you really got behind. Is the line, ‘I’ve made love all my life and
never paid the price’ some Catholic guilt thing?” “At the end of the day,”
muses Jim, “I think there’s the ultimate price to pay if you’ve been fucking
around as much as I have. I’ve gone mad in my life, lived it up and loved
every minute of it. I’ve been a dirty bastard and I haven’t paid the price.
Do I feel guilty? I dunno.”

Frequently, the apparent simplicity of these sweet, melancholic, funky songs
is a veneer beneath which all sorts of ideas and stories squirm. Take the
surreal rhymes of “Algebra,” for instance. “Without sounding like a prat,”
says Dave, ruefully–as Jim descends into fits of laughter–“it’s an old
Greek word that was used in Plato’s ‘Phaedrus.’ It’s a drug which is a
poison, but is also its own antidote. Derrida, the French philosopher, used
it to describe people who read into what you say and twist your words
around. So it’s a rap about nonsense, and what people read into that.”

Derrida, sexual guilt, drug-induced panic, Plato, backward samples,
existential angst–Music Is Dirt can hardly be considered typical pop fare.
What it is, however, is a collection of idiosyncratic pop tunes shot through
with soul and dripping in character. It’s also very likely to cause the
biggest stir of the summer.