Attack of the Grey Lantern

by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Opening with the swirling, cinematic strings of "The Chad Who Loved Me," Mansun's debut album Attack of the Grey Lantern is anything but a conventional Brit-pop record. Few debut records are this assured, especially when a group is developing such an idiosyncratic, individual style. Mansun recalls many artists -- Suede, Manic Street Preachers, Tears for Fears, David Bowie, ABC, Blur, Prince -- without sounding exactly like any of them. Attack of the Grey Lantern is a grandiose, darkly seductive blend of new wave and '90s indie rock, filled with phased guitars, drum machines, and subversive, off-kilter song structures, many of which wind past five minutes. No song is ever quite what it seems -- "Mansun's Only Love Song" balances between soul and fractured pop, "Stripper Vicar" has new wave backing vocals and hard-rock chords, while "Taxloss" marries Suede's dark glam rock with uneasy psychedelia. It's an ambitious, even pretentious, record, but Mansun has enough confidence and skill to make it an astonishingly original debut. [The American edition of Attack of the Grey Lantern, however, is a bit of a different story. For some reason, the sequencing has been completely scrambled and "Stripper Vicar" has been replaced by the inferior early single "Take It Easy, Chicken." Since almost all of the songs were segued together and the album worked as a series of shifting sonic textures and moods, the re-sequenced album is simply a disaster, ludicrously robbing a fine concept album of its concept.]