Review: Mighty Mighty-PopCan!

Mighty Mighty: Pop Can: The Definitive Collection 1986-1988 (Cherry Red, 2013)

One of my most anticipated releases of 2013 is the forthcoming Scared to Be Happy box set, which features a litany of bands from the UK indie/twee/C-86/baggy/early shoegazer eras.  I’m a sucker for almost all of those genres, and I consider myself pretty knowledgeable regarding them. But, honestly, I wasn’t that familiar with Mighty Mighty despite the fact that they appeared on the legendary C86 compilation.  Hailing from Birmingham, Mighty Mighty originally only existed for only a few years, riding the crest of the British indie/C86 wave, but the rise of grunge, shoegaze, and Madchester let the air out of their collective tires after a few singles, one album (1988’s Sharks, on Chapter 22) and aborted sessions for a second album (finally released in 2012 as The Betamax Tapes).  This two-CD anthology, by the always collector-friendly Cherry Red label, collects most of their recorded output from their 1986-1988 heyday, including “Law” (their C86 contribution) and “Everybody Knows the Monkey” (the first single, and their contribution to the CD86 reissue) along with most of Sharks and the Built Like a Car EP.

Much was made, in their initial press, about singer Hugh McGuinness’s vocal similarity to one Steven Patrick Morrissey, and the band’s similarity to the Smiths, but Mighty Mighty were more than mere Smiths-clones.  The dual guitar attack (brothers Mick and Peter Geoghegan) was augmented by a very un-Smiths use of the Vox and Hammond organ, adding a 60’s garage rock flavor to the jangle pop.  At times, the organ lines become the central melody with the guitars merely chugging along as background, in ways similar to the seminal New Zealand band The Chills.  McGuinness’s voice can, at times, be a striking chameleon for Morrissey, although he has a tendency to croon more than the Moz of ’86-’88 (see “One Way”).  The band’s sound tends to be more energetic than the Smiths, with soul and funk basslines and dance grooves imported from Postcard Records artists like Orange Juice and Josef F.  But there are also moments where the smooth pop of Aztec Camera and Prefab Sprout comes into play (“Freedom of the City”) and others where the band could be less politically-minded kissing cousins with The Housemartins.  Occasionally ramshackle arrangements echo The Velvet Underground.

In the post-Smiths indie pop world, where it took merely a rush and a push to make the charts, it’s easy to see why Mighty Mighty burned brightly, but also why they faded fast: there were a lot of other bands doing something similar during their heyday.  Unfortunately, a fair number of really excellent songs got lost in the shuffle, but now is as good of a time as any to revisit their work.