Mercury-nominated for White Bread Black Beer (the result is announced on Tuesday), Scritti’s Green Gartside has spent 28 years exploring the interface between blue-eyed soul, Marxist theory, gender politics and hip-hop. If that sounds elusive, then so, too, is Gartside — it’s seven years since the last album. Scritti Politti play at Bestival, on the Isle of Wight, this Friday.
1 The Word Girl With a candy-pop coating, Gartside sneaked into the charts, and there exposed the rancid wellspring of that one little word, “girl”.
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2 Asylums in Jerusalem After rough and ready beginnings, the prototype proper arrived here, in 1982.
3 Dr Abernathy The sprawling, Beach Boys-like standout from White Bread Black Beer.
4 Absolute An electro-pop beauty from their commercial peak, Cupid & Psyche 85.
5 Faithless A mass-harmony, multilayered 1982 soul stunner.
6 Brushed with Oil, Dusted with Powder Anomie & Bonhomie’s nomadic closer, taking in Highbury Fields and the Hollywood Hills.
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7 Perfect Way Cupid & Psyche’s other dancefloor monster.
8 First Boy in This Town (Lovesick) From 1988’s patchy Provision. Fascinating precisely because of its cold plasticity.
9 After Six A swipe at Bible-bashers, to a tune that recalls, slyly, Spirit in the Sky.
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10 Oh Patti (Don’t Feel Sorry for Loverboy) Miles Davis played on this. Still, nobody knows why.
Download At www.napster.co.uk