Such is the corporate world we live in these days that it's normal for influential bands to get together for that inevitable re-union tour to swell the coffers after the solo careers have faded out and interest in their new material is on the wane. Hand in hand with this come the 25th anniversary edition of the best-selling album and the greatest hits with one new track to ensure long-term fans part with their ackers. Repackage, re-evaluate and paint the vulgar picture all over again.
So it's hard to believe there were once bands who decided to split up because it was a sell-out to sell large numbers of records. Yet those times really did exist and in the case of one long-lost, but still revered bunch called THE SINISTER CLEANERS, the time to split co-incided with their single 'When I Feel Strange' becoming a college radio hit in the USA and companies in the same land of the free keen to throw money at them for the chance to release their debut album. As one of their number, 'Legendary' Len Liggins said: "If we'd taken the deals we were offered and played the corporate game, in our own eyes we'd have failed."
A perverse, but admirable stance, all things considered, and it's with the same perversity that Leeds' one-time finest - featuring John Parkes (vocals, guitar, bass), Len Liggins (guitar, bass, violin, vocals), Andrew Middleton (guitar, bass, vocals) and drummer Simon Smith - finally got together to record the 4 tracks left outstanding in 1987 and release their debut album 'Shine' a mere 20 years after it was initially scheduled!
Of course, as the personnel suggest, The Sinister Cleaners came from the earlier wave of great, non-comformist West Yorkshire sounds that got us young pop pickers excited during the mid-to-late 1980s. Simon Smith would shortly take up Shaun Charman's discarded sticks in THE WEDDING PRESENT; Len Liggins would also flirt with The Weddoes and become a lynchpin with Weddoes guitarist Peter 'Grapper' Salowka in THE UKRANIANS; Andrew Middleton would play with THE TRIPPING CHERUBS and John Parkes would later work with GREENHOUSE, FUZZBIRD and WHOLE SKY MONITOR as well as becoming a firm W&H favourite and release last year's excellent 'Faithlessnessless' (sic) solo album.
So there's pedigree in them thar ranks and indeed it's important to remember that The Sinister Cleaners were a product of Miners Strike-era Yorkshire and contemporaries of fractured, but vital Leeds neighbours like The Age Of Chance and The Three Johns. Militancy (tempered by humour) and intelligence was in the air and originality was writ large on the wall.
It's demonstrated over and over during this tremendous hour or so of wonderfully off-kilter pop. Yes, occasionally the thrilling headrush of the music recalls The Wedding Present (check the frenetically scrubbed guitars on songs like 'Bleed' and the scabrous 'Goodbye Ms. Jones'), but mostly The Sinister Cleaners brought their own potently toxic brand of Carbona to the indie building and it fuelled loads of wonderful, slice-of-life vignettes such as the beautifully-observed, Thatcher-baiting '1941', the riotously short and pithy 'Crazies #3', the furious Dylan-isms of 'Crazies #1' and the bracing 'Atlantic Satellite', which might have been written during the Reagan era but has only gained in relevance in these dark days of Bush, Blair and Brown.
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Sadly, though, it's the self-same idiosyncracy that The Sinister Cleaners made their own (and charmed John Peel and Janice Long with) that arguably would have sunk them in more commercial terms. 'Shine' brims with recognisable poppiness, but also a tendency to subvert ordinary song structures and a desire to display a collective intelligence that's still capable of scaring off less hardcore fans. Brilliant though they are, tunes like 'Monkey & The Typewriter' (a Northern strain of The Magic Band if ever there was), the genuinely disconcerting 'Eating Raoule' and 'Longing For Next Year' - with its' open commentary on mortality and hopelessness in general - are probably all too demanding for the regulation indie kid in the long run. Even if the latter is surely the best song ever to feature the word "demijohn" in the lyric.
But then again, who knows? Arguably this writer's favourite UK band of all time, The Only Ones, have finally re-formed for a lap of gigging glory as he scribbles, so maybe this is the Sinister Cleaners turn too? Ultimately, though, what is more important is that 'Shine' is finally out there and this most ridiculously talented of bands is at last ready to be accepted by a new breed of the discerning.
For those of you unaware of Leeds' pop heritage two decades before the likes of !Forward, Russia! and Kaiser Chiefs came to save us, this fascinating little item may well be just the historical catalyst you need.
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