By: Si Forster
Faith No More | website | facebook | twitter |
Released on August 19, 2016 via Mordam Records
1987 was a bit of a mad year for me. I was 16 and the world was opening up in all manner of scary and interesting ways. By far the biggest thing at the time was the discovery of “my” music. I had tried to be all indie and moody beforehand with stuff like early U2, Echo & the Bunnymen and Joy Division, but these were all things I nicked (and still own, but don’t tell him) from my much older brother. I was starting to find new things, music that had nothing to do with what had gone on before, stuff that my older siblings and my own friends had no idea about, things that would make me as different as I felt at that time.
Somewhere along the line, I saw the video for Faith No More’s ‘We Care a Lot’ from their new album Introduce Yourself. At this point, I was on the thrash metal road and everything was brash, noisy and really bloody exciting. This thing that I was then confronted with was on the one hand completely at odds with what I was immersed in, but at the same time it was an absolutely perfect fit with whatever else was going on. Strangely and with some comfort, this wasn’t just me; as many subsequent Faith No More shows (and there were a lot!) were populated by the same people I was hanging out with at Metallica/Kreator/Nuclear Assault etc. shows, the band themselves putting out the likes of Prong and Mortal Sin as support during their late 1980s / early 1990s UK tours.
I wasn’t immediately convinced. It took me until the 2nd single ‘Anne’s Song’ came out for me to run to the local record shop and ask for a copy of We Care a Lot. What happened next was the happiest of accidents, as they got the wrong thing in for me, and I was stuck not with what I thought was the debut single by this new band, but their actual debut album from two years earlier. More than I was expecting to pay (it was an import, so was probably nudging 7 quid!), I forked out anyway – probably more out of politeness than anything else – and went home.
What I heard was a bit strange. Shorn of the huge, colourful production of what I’d seen on TV (Introduce Yourself is a filthy masterpiece, but clearly had a few bob spent on it), this initially sounded a bit flat and weird. Very recent reading reveals this to be because Side A is in fact their original demo, but almost 30 years ago (shut up) this was completely alien to me. It was probably a while later that I gave the record a proper go, having moved back to more noisy things, but whatever got me to revisit it (probably the amount I spent on it) is something that changed my life, or at least my outlook on it.
We Care a Lot remains the most confident record I own. Faith No More (then the extra-punctuated Faith. No More) knew that they were so far out there that they fit in absolutely nowhere, and they didn’t care. They just went ahead and did whatever it was that they did anyway, knowing that an audience existed for their music – and also knowing that their audience didn’t know this yet, but looking forward to that moment when they would. We Care a Lot is as pure a blueprint for a band as anyone could ever wish for: brash and angry on the one hand, gentle and beautiful on the other. It’s a whole that shouldn’t ever work, but does. ‘The Jungle’ marries noisy riffing and very hard-hit drums with vocalist Chuck Mosely’s almost childlike observations, ‘Why Do You Bother’ places the record in its time with angry post-punk sloganeering that 1985 used to so well.
Flip it over, and there’s a whole other world to enjoy. ‘Greed’ sees Chuck attacking his critics with lines such as “They say that when I’m supposed to be singing / all I’m really doing is yelling / Oh well.” over an incessant rhythm, similarly the instrumental “Pills For Breakfast” shows what an intense and unique unit this original lineup was.
Closing the album are two of the finest songs that Faith No More ever made. Ending with ‘New Beginnings’, a sad tale about a child growing up in a military family that is portrayed with such tenderness, both from Chuck and a beautiful bass part from Bill Gould, that it’s hard to imagine that this isn’t true of whoever in the band wrote it. And, prior to that, is ‘Arabian Disco’. This is a song that is such an expression of joy for me that my heart still leaps as that four-note drop to the “…Do you really know?” opening of the second verse. One song, and my adolescence is right there.
Finally getting a proper reissue after a brief Black Friday Record Store Day appearance, We Care a Lot comes in formats remastered and expanded. None of that matters to me, other than it’s about bloody time that everyone else got to hear this record again. What is if importance to me is that it happened at all back then, and that it continues to do so.
