Bending The Line Between Confidence And Arrogance

By Joe Kavanagh

Although Manchester likes to style itself as the music capital of the UK, the melodious potency traditionally associated with Britain's ninth most populous city has been a ghost of its former self for much of the past decade.

For sure, the late 80s and much of the 90s cemented the city's reputation as a sonic hotbed, with names like The Smiths, Stone Roses and Joy Division bringing innovation and the type of iconoclastic coolness that was often emulated, but never quite captured, by their more self-conscious southern counterparts.

London may have had the quantity of bands but Manchester consistently provided the quality, illuminating many musical paths on which others would follow.

In recent times, however, other northern cities have mounted a rigorous challenge for Manchester's crown. Leeds has given us Kaiser Chiefs, Sunshine Underground and The Cribs, Liverpool has spawned The Coral, The Wombats and Zutons, while the strongest challenge of all has come from Sheffield, with an impressive stable that includes Arctic Monkeys, Reverend And The Makers and The Long Blondes.

Music may be an important aspect of the city's identity but it has been over a decade since Manchester was of any real importance to the world of music.

Not since 1994/95, when the Gallagher brothers steered Oasis out of the local clubs towards international stardom, has the city been able to back up its boasts with record sales.

That may be about to change as bands like The Ting Tings and Twisted Wheel seek to translate their current status as darlings of the underground into international acclaim, yet even their hype machines pale in comparison to that of another Mancunian act with a mouthy lead singer named Liam.

The Liam in this case is Liam Fray, precocious vocalist and guitarist with the Courteeners, one of the most heralded acts to arrive on the indie scene this year.

Although press releases are fond of describing them as a gang-mentality group in the truest sense, the band is almost exclusively the brainchild of Fray, who had been writing songs since picking up his first guitar as a teenager.

In typically cocky fashion, Fray once described his introduction to songwriting, saying: "I bought a guitar when I was 15 and started writing. I wrote one song and thought, 'This is absolutely f***in' dire, I'm going to give up.' But then the second one was pretty good. I only had that one s**t song and I was away." Although he initially started out as a solo artist, plodding around the city's lesser known venues with his acoustic guitar, Fray claims that he always wrote each song with the intention of eventually playing them with a band, so in October of 2006 he called upon three of his closest friends from his neighborhood in the Manchester suburb of Middleton.

It mattered little to Fray that the four of them shared little in common when it came to musical tastes or even the fact that some of the new recruits could barely play their instrument. Instead, his decision to draft in the remainder of the Courteeners practically from the same housing estate that he had grown up on, was motivated by the fact that all four would share a similar world view and ambition.

They also shared the same strong work ethic, rehearsing endlessly before taking their first tentative steps into the beckoning limelight of the city's thriving live circuit.

By the beginning of last year, word began to spread in Manchester about a new band, bursting with energy and armed with a hatful of anthem-like songs.

A short time later, the Courteeners were selling-+out venues in Manchester and other parts of the country, purely as a result of word of mouth and internet chatter.

Soon, the Courteeners growing popularity saw them opening for acts like Happy Mondays and the Ordinary Boys, where they distinguished themselves by winning over crowds that often bordered on hostile.

Their brashness also served them well in other ways, such as the time they were due to play support to fellow hipsters, Blood Red Shoes, only for them to cancel at the last minute.

Instead of taking the night off, Fray and company simply told the promoter that they would serve as support and headline act, winning over virtually the entire crowd in the process.

Such feats soon brought the attention of a clutch of record labels, with Polydor offshoot, Loog Records eventually doing enough to secure their signature last summer.

By the time they released their third single, What Took You So Long, the band had a sufficient following to see it peak at #20 in the charts and receive a vast amount of airplay throughout Europe.

Even Morrissey got in on the act, anointing the Courteeners as the true inheritors of Manchester's music legacy. Not since Oasis had a Manchester band been the recipient of such hype and Fray has even been described as both of the Gallagher brothers rolled into one.

Conversely, there are many who claim that much of the hype surrounding the group is born from wishful thinking and geographical inertia, more than any actual evidence that a great band is in the offing.

Like them or loathe them, Oasis generated the kind of excitement that was palpable, injected new life into guitar music and managed to retain a self-deprecatory air even as they exuded arrogance.

By its very definition, there can be only one original and, despite Fray's prodigious boasting, the Courteeners have yet to convince that they are much more than another indie act relying on Oasis' playbook.

Whether it is declaring his band to be the best in the entire world or his regular rants at other acts, Fray appears to be aping many of Oasis' moves with none of their subtle irony.

He even backs down mid-feud, such as recently when he declared fellow UK act the Enemy to be "little p****s", among other things, only to bump into them a few weeks later backstage after a gig. According to the Enemy's front man, Tom Clarke: "Liam Fray said if he ever met us he would have to knock us out.

Then he met us in Manchester and stood with a dribble of wee between his legs and apologized to our Liam (Watts, drummer) profusely for about half an hour which is, where I am from, what we call 'flapping it'." Hardly the actions of the reckless-rebel-cum-man-of-conviction that he is so fond of projecting. Such personal deficiencies would not be quite so stark were it not for the fact that the evidence provided to back up Fray's declarations of their greatness has, so far, been less than compelling.

All will finally be revealed with next week's release of their debut album, St. Jude, which was produced by the legendary Stephen Street (Blur, Smiths, Kaiser Chiefs).

Only then will the world know whether the Courteneers are a figment of an overactive music media or an act that truly deserves to be mentioned with the great Manchester bands. Fray seems to have talked himself into believing the latter, recently telling one journalist: "If some bands want to be flippant and get carried away and go from unknown to famous to over in nine months, then that's alright. But it's going to take a lot more than that to get rid of us. We're going to be around for ages."

The music buying public will be the judge of that.

St Jude by The Courteeners is out on April 7