Edible 5 Ft Smiths + Peace Burial at Sea + Surplus Millions @ Hull New Adelphi Club, 4th Dec 2003
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For the first band, put together Alabama 3 (vocal hectoring in time to electronic backing, live drums and guitar) plus Vic 20 (the tackier side of the synthesizer, but with a girl singer who's nothing if not purty) plus East 17 (I swear the main singer looked like Brian Harvey!). And what have you got? Surplus Millions. Something there doesn't quite add up… they have one nice laidback electronic ballad (add the more-obscure-than-you Monkey 7 to the sum?) and instil some actual passion in a shouty climax, but rattle along for the most part with little appeal. And there's something dodgy about a guy who looks forty singing, "come on girl, you're nearly sixteen," though that's another story…

Peace Burial at Sea, meanwhile, combine Constellation-type instrumental rock with vocals worthy of a BSP comrade. They are, however, more affecting when you can't tell what the guy's saying than when he's banging on about chaos and logic. It's an impressive set, suitably noisy and dirty and weird, and they deserve more than another listen instead of being just suitable as a send-off support for the main band :

After about six years and various line-ups, Hull's finest have called it a day. Over three albums worth of recordings (never granted an 'official' release) and nationwide gigs (well, as far north as Newcastle, east as Norwich, west as Truck fest and south as London, probably) and it led to this for Edible 5 Ft Smiths. Forget about what they didn't do. Remember this band for what they were, which was all kinds of things.

Perhaps I should discuss one or two songs they played at this last gig.

'Requiem for Toy Soldiers' opens the set like it always used to, always a grand introduction with that ringing guitar that leads into a hymnal plea of nostalgia; Matt dribbles wibblage from his guitar, the frontline harmonies powerful from Jonny guitar, Bod the lady-bass and the front-Matt (complete with two microphones to himself - one with echo, one without) backed by suitably military drumming by Ian. It's a rock anthem for doomed youth! And it's followed by a bit of rock-opera-doo-wop, power-pop, Christmas balladry complete with glockenspiel, and of course that "song about fucking"* which would've been banned was it released in the 1950s as it sounds like it comes from. Eclecticism lives in Hull, not to 'be' different, but because they are different. Needless to say, they never needed to be cool: check their name for a start.

But EDIBLE 5 FT SMITHS is a name that shall be remembered. An obscure but tantalising footnote in the future rock encyclopaedia that tells us what on earth the members do next (Bod and Ian carry on with their other bands! Jonny joins Age of Jets(ex-Kid Samson!)! Matt, I dunno, but he makes a better rock 'n' roll star than Justin Hawkins, he could have him any day). The name should be remembered like that of Seymour, or On a Friday; because the band members go on to bigger things and because the name was damn stupid. Those who saw the Edibles, though, will remember them not just for their name but for their songs and stage, uh, presence.

Edibles lyrics chart an absurd path straight forward to your heart; cos in that always-charming way they're funny and also true. There's the eternal obsession with Canada as a place of escapism (yeah, Canada), and an ability to deliver cheek that's touching ("please stop calling me when Neighbours is on / you know I love you, but that's just WRONG!") or a contradiction that's convincing ("I guess it wouldn't hurt to be hurt again") or just to scream into the mic with a tender ferocity. I'd like to quote each entire verse and chorus (schoolkids should write them on the covers of roughbooks) as I would the Lucksmiths or the Aislers Set or any twee bands who think about what they're saying, but that verbiage wouldn't show how the lyrics are sung or even half the picture of the music this group played. The tunes were as cheeky, as honest and as stupid as the respective tone of the songs: a rockabilly riff here, four-way vocal arrangement there, a whole lotta feedback on the top and ba-boom!

Whatever exact mix of reasons led them to split I don't know, just as I could never tell how their songs came to be in the first place. Perhaps the pressure of supporting bands like Ten Benson in front of ten people, the cost of ever-breaking guitar strings, the difficulty of finding a good copy of the Canadian flag to stick to a CD sleeve. Ha. The indignity of having not one but three copies of your second album turn up exclusively in the Cancer Research Shop in town. Haha. The unluckiness of a visit by the best-written music mag around being mis-dated so the journos watch a jazz quartet instead of the perpetually up-and-coming local band. Ha... Seriously, the lack of opportunities that comes naturally to most bands based in Hull, despite all the best efforts of one of the country's best grassroots venues - so it ends in the place it must have begun, the only venue here worth sticking at, the Adelphi, and for once it's packed just for the Edibles.

They could hardly have given themselves a more fitting send-off in that the gig involves much between-song bumbling ("I'm sorry to have offended your family") besides most of the songs we wanted. The usual apocalyptic closer 'Outtakes (From a Promising Career That Went Bad)' ends with Matt disappearing backstage; is it all too much? Can he bare his dark imaginings and put up with this weighty noise no more? Actually he starts playing piano to tell us that he wasn't drunk. For a moment it looks like the crowd won't join in the singalong, till all four remaining microphones point offstage and most of us join in, "we were not drunk." Maybe not, but some of us were emotional.

I first saw this group, back when they had a 'the' in their name, two and a half years ago when I came to university in Hull; they made me feel at home, partly because they reminded me of bands I knew already. But really there's no-one like them. Goodbye Edibles!

The demo version of 'Cycle Nova Scotia' is the first and best track on the Truck 2003 compilation album, available from the Truck website.

'Musical Party' is probably still available from Cancer Research, but despite, or because of, an interesting debt to Manic Street Preachers, it's mostly quite shit.

The last album 'Milk Race Over Quebec' is probably lying in the bottom of an A&R tray waiting for some chump to hear it... I wrote an old review of it here.

*"that's the best link I've ever heard!" - Bod on stage at Truck 2003