Flawed brilliance enhanced by cursed production

In the first of ‘In Defence Of…’, a new series revisiting albums that were either panned by the critics or split the artists’ fanbase, music editor Ian Burke delves into 1997’s Endless, Nameless by The Wildhearts.

If debut album Earth vs The Wildhearts fired Britrock’s starting pistol in 1993, then Endless, Nameless, just four years later, was its cataclysmic death knell.

Britrock was Kerrang!’s reaction to the NME and Melody Maker’s endless fawning over Britpop. Both movements were absolute nonsense, with geographic ties trumping a cohesive sound. Oasis had as much in common with Pulp as Terrorvision did with Skunk Anansie, yet there they were on front covers with each other, glued together by the flawed idea that because they come from the same island and know their way around a power chord, there must be a common bond.

Despite other bands having more commercial success – Therapy?, Reef and the two others mentioned above – The Wildhearts always set the agenda. Earth vs... with its giant riffs and choruses that would get you arrested these days, had 1993 timestamped through to the marrow. Its follow-up P.H.U.Q. swept all before it in ‘95, reaching #6 on the album charts.

Internal wrangling, being at loggerheads with their record label, and smashing up Kerrang!’s office fuelled the excitement of their fanbase. Then things went really weird.

They released a single called ‘Sick of Drugs’ – which they absolutely weren’t – that came with its own growable grass matt. ‘Red Light Green Light’ followed with a video that flicked from a red light to a green light the whole way through. And then, infested with stimulants, they recorded Endless, Nameless.

It single-handedly won the Loudness War.

The album revelled in pushing recording equipment beyond what it could handle, lending every track an inescapable distorted smear. It must’ve ruined producer Ralph Jezzard’s studio.

According to Wildhearts frontman, Ginger, it was the sound of “four different drug addicts that weren’t even on the same drug”. 

One of their dealers made a cameo in the video for lead single ‘Anthem’, a song as infectious as anything they’d put out before, which had the stans struggling to stop saliva cascading from their gobs. It turned out, though, that the overload of fuzz that made Rich Battersby’s snare drum sound like a battalion of steam hammers marching on Sheffield was ever-present throughout the album, ditto the diaphragm-shaking, nausea-inducing bass. 

For fans used to the singalong choruses that wove their way through The Wildhearts’ earlier work, hearing ‘Junkenstein’ (the feral opening track on Endless, Nameless) took some serious acclimatisation. And that was from a band not shy about jamming a brick onto the accelerator: ‘Suckerpunch’, ‘Whoa Shit, You Got Through’ and ‘Caffeine Bomb’ being prime examples, with the latter even sneaking in the line “Baby, can’t you see I’m shitting brown water” onto Top of the Pops.

On the face of it, this was a band at their commercial peak committing a blatant act of self-sabotage. Yet, there’s a solid argument for the opening triumvirate of ‘Junkenstein’, ‘Nurse Maximum’ and ‘Anthem’ being the strongest of their career. 

Second single ‘Urge’ – complete with a video featuring animals doing things that’d make even David Attenborough blush – and ‘Pissjoy’ (which had a choir of children chanting the song’s title in the chorus) were woozy psychedelic departures. Oh, and completely deranged.

‘Soundog Babylon’ is closer to traditional Wildhearts territory, ie, it could be four different songs superglued together, including a dubby interlude and a Big Daft Riff to round things off. 

Endless, Nameless is far from perfect. ‘Now is the Colour’ and a cover of the Dogs d’Amour’s ‘Heroin’ should’ve been nixed in favour of any of the ‘Urge’ b-sides, and although ‘Why You Lie’ has sunk into obscurity, it’s an improvement on the two previous tracks.

‘Why You Lie’ leads to the extraordinary closer, and most apt song title Ginger ever wrote: ‘Thunderfuck’.

It begins its seven-minute adventure on a lolloping trip-hop beat before the wistful frontman takes to the mic. A cello butts heads with a towering cliff of feedback, violins chime in, Battersby’s stickwork reaches warp speed, and then, for two tense seconds, everything stops. 

Six slow-motion drum detonations then pave the way for Ginger to repeat “And with the world in his ass,” as the entire house of cards audibly collapses around him. He acts as ringmaster, as John Lennon did at the end of Sgt Pepper’s, bidding us all “so long… don’t be a stranger… let’s do this again… you have my number… see ya… adios… bye now… that’s all folks” hidden way back in the mix.

Despite the retrospective bequeathal of classic status on Earth vs and P.H.U.Q., they are both of their time and would sound outdated if anybody recorded them now. Endless, Nameless is still divisive, but its corrupted, cursed production has protected it from the ravages of time. There’s nothing else that sounds like it in The Wildhearts’ catalogue or anyone else’s – it’s a magnificent, flawed one-off.

Ginger has been asked if he would ever release a remastered version of the album with the distortion removed, but he claims it would be impossible to clean up. It’s just how it was produced. It was meant to sound overexposed and over-saturated, and although the band was a dysfunctional circus during its recording and split up soon after, he rates it as his favourite Wildhearts album.

It might just be mine, too.

To pitch a submission for our new In Defence Of… series revisiting albums that were either panned by the critics or split the artists’ fanbase, email aAh.Editor@gmail.com.