After five albums over 10 years, Cracker's ever-evolving music (they have embraced country, alt.country, indie, rock, pop and skiffle) and Stakhanovite touring have finally begun to attract the attention of mainstream America. In Britain their progress has been similarly laboured.
The situation is complicated by leader David Lowery's former tenure fronting Camper Van Beethoven. During the encore, Lowery yields to public demand and gives Camper Van Beethoven's best-known song, Take the Skinheads Bowling, a reluctant airing. The crowd's reaction far eclipses the response to Cracker material. Little wonder the poor man looks so distraught afterwards.
Looming out from underneath a comedy stetson, Lowery is in a rather edgy mood. He begins by musing that a larger venue might have been more suitable (the Borderline is alarmingly packed), after which he projects a few mutterings audible only to dogs. His four companions appear equally reticent, with only Kenny Margolis's enormous accordion and bassist Brandy Wood's dinner-lady haircut offering anything in the way of visual distraction.
Virginia-based Cracker's unwillingness to project - and they're not especially sullen, merely less here in mind than body - may be a result of the excellence of their new material. Because their progress has been so Sisyphean, the audience is always a couple of albums behind the group. Therefore 1993's overly ironic Euro-Trash Girl is the cue for a mass singalong, although it has not aged well. The same year's more subtle Take Me Down to the Infirmary has fared better, but the more recent a Cracker song's vintage, the better it is.
Taken from the recent Forever album and aired to curious incomprehension, Brides of Neptune is a dreamy opener, while Guarded by Monkeys fulfils its title's promise. But all is dwarfed by the fabulous One Fine Day, with its heart-tugging guitar signature and its oddly moving lyrical motif concerning broken wings and mute blackbirds. It's the song of Cracker's career, but it's only Take the Skinheads Bowling that the hordes want to hear.
