How I Learned to Love the Bootboys

Haines once said that all of his albums are concept albums, and here the concept is the past, mostly the 70s. His witty anti-nostalgia tops and tails the album, from the sublime single "The Rubettes" ("the future's made of coal, the past is made of gold") to the heartbreaking "Future Generation," where Haines imagines a, well, future generation nostalgic for the Auteurs. In accepting his fate to be commercially a minor player in the world of pop, while simultaneously asserting his genius ("this music could destroy a nation") he marks the peak of a very great talent.

As a result, the album could be seen as being nothing more than a private joke at the expense of the listener (or perhaps even at the expense of the record company...?? something that the reviews of Haines's 2003 orchestral compilation Das Capital implied)... and yet, to suggest that would be to completely dismiss the strong melodies, sophisticated hooks and complex musical arrangements.

The album opens with The Rubettes, which introduces the idea of songs rooted in the late 1960's, or, moreover, songs that are set against a backdrop of popular culture. The track was intended as a Black Box Recorder single, which explains the appearance of Nixey and Moore, as well as the stop-start song structure and the delightfully subversive chorus references to Sugar Baby Love. The next track, 1967, is another standout, referencing the year that Haines was born, whilst seeming to be both about his parents ("1967 / no pop in our record collection / The Beatles and Stones mean nothing to us / I think we should count our blessings / in 1967") and about the lack of musical progression since the late 60's pop heyday ("1999 / no pop in our record collection / no records on the radio station / it means nothing to us... / since 1967"). The title track meanwhile seems to nod back to Now I'm Cowboy's themes of different class, with Haines distancing himself from the trendy class referentialism of Pulp by adding the sinister chorus refrain; "Oh yeah, alright, who's scared, tonight? Oh yeah, alright, who's scared, to dance?".

Your Gang/Our Gang is a slightly humours glam-pastiche, knowingly referencing the Glitter band - which demonstrates that Haines, as a satirist, is every bit as daring as Chris Morris - whilst also acting a short interlude between How I Learned to Love the Bootboys and the more New-Wave-like track, Some Changes. Here, Haines offers a wash of condescending and contradictory statements, including a rumination on fans who think they have the right to tell him how to create his work ("this kid comes up to me / says, 'you gotta raise your game' / this kid is half my age / '...pleased to meet you, Mr. Haines'"), a jibe seemingly aimed at his peers ("got a letter from a friend / it says 'you're scum, you're gonna die'") and the album's proto-mission-statement, "just hate nostalgia". The next three tracks, School, Johnny and the Hurricanes and The South Will Rise Again offer the undiluted core of the album, with Haines managing to achieve the right balance between nostalgic rumination, pop cultural references and personal biography... all the while making sure to include some fantastic hooks, melodies and an overall approach to production that seems to reference every single style of music that he'd previously dabbled in (light pop, Britpop, glam-pop, grunge and proto-electronic minimalism).

Asti Spumante is a song I'm not as keen on - relying heavily on a repetitive structure and Haines's truly venomous vocals, including mantra-like lines like "it's a little less tat in your council flat... it's a little less flat in your council tat" and the quite Mark E. Smith like couplet "your old Ford Zephyr, your old Ford Zephyr won't start, start, start, start, start!!" - while Sick of Hari Krisna has a gentler sound that recalls past tracks like Daughter of a Child, After Murder Park and Unsolved Child Murder. Lights Out and Future Generation (another song that points back to the ESP kids concept) bring the album to a close on a low-key note - with the former offering up a lyric that might recall the terrorist themes of Baader Meinhof - whilst the latter gives us more of that self-aggrandising self-reference, in which Haines prophesises of a future in which his music gets the respect and attention it has previously been denied ("of course I love the old songs / from New Wave to Murder Park / the future generation / will get it from the start").

How I Learned to Love the Bootboys is probably the weakest of The Auteur's albums, with too many of the songs sounding like dusted-down Black Box Recorder outtakes or the sound of Haines' personal and professional bitterness set to music. It's still a fine record in it's own right, with songs like The Rubettes, 1967, Some Changes, School, Johnny and the Hurricanes and The South Will Rise Again all standing tall alongside previous delights like Bailed Out, Home Again, Chinese Bakery, Lenny Valentino, Unsolved Child Murder, Light Aircraft on Fire (...the list is quite endless!!!). If you're new to The Auteurs, I would suggest getting this album first, before progressing onto New Wave, Now I'm a Cowboy and After Murder Park, so to experience his greatness in ascent!! If you already have those albums... then this is certainly worth getting regardless.