A Grand Don't Come for Free

Description

Despite the thoroughly idiosyncratic British character of 2002’s Original Pirate Material, The Streets’ debut resonated with post-ravers around the world, marking it as a touchstone of life in our apathetic age. A vaguely conceptual record about “a day in the life of a geezer,” Original Pirate Material evoked what it is to be a young man living at the dawn of the millennium: smug, sarcastic, and frightened all at once. Where some of the songs strayed from the album’s premise, every track on The Streets’ follow-up, A Grand Don’t Come for Free, is integral to the whole, contributing to another chapter in the narrator’s story of loss and redemption. More than any other release in recent memory, this one demands to be heard in a single sitting, as MC Mike Skinner’s alter ego loses a thousand pounds, meets a girl, loses his friends, goes on holiday, cheats on the girl, gets dumped, and miraculously recovers his money. Beat-wise, Skinner has stepped up his game considerably, whether battering his grime peers with the bass of “Not Addicted” or raising the emotional stakes with the epic string passages of “Dry Your Eyes.” Elsewhere, “It Was Supposed to Be So Easy” features triumphant, crackling horn bends, while the 60s-style “Fit but You Know It” shares the same stiff pogo rhythms that propelled Outkast’s “Hey Ya” up the charts. With its multiple characters, myriad twists and suspenseful payoffs, A Grand Don’t Come for Free feels like a screenplay set to a homemade soundtrack. Indeed, if Skinner were a filmmaker, he would surely work outside the studio system, creating the kind of deeply personal features that never make it to the multiplex.