Cod Almighty | Diary

Introducing the band

18 July 2024

The football season is still three weeks away and yet the Mariners already find themselves in a foreboding and familiar 14th place. Artell needs to do something about that, and sharpish. If we’re still 14th by mid-August, the fans are going to start getting twitchy.

Your West Yorkshire Diary jests, of course, but patience is notoriously thin among modern-day football fans — the ones that talk about low blocks, presses, inverted wingers, false nines, and xG. I’ve got better at embracing change, but I’ve also found it increasingly hard to keep track of the tactical and analytical nuances as they've evolved. I’m sort of left in this void where I can see the game’s moved forward, but I’m trapped between whatever it is today and whatever it was in 1994.

I was chatting about this very subject to a friend as we made our way to see the Manics and Suede at Leeds’ Millennium Square last weekend. Like football, music has changed a lot in the last 30 years, yet Brett Anderson can still stroll out in a shirt unbuttoned down to his navel, swing a mic around his head, and captivate the fans with a blend of what the band has always been and what the band has also become.

Music and football are both present and nostalgic. So, if you don’t like what it’s become, you can always enjoy what it once was. I can make sense of Town’s back catalogue, whereas their new material rarely hooks me in immediately. Why’s that? Well, between each new album there’s a raft of changes as the band tries to reinvent itself to broaden its appeal in search of chart success, and I have a hard time loving the new generation.

Harry Clifton leaving the Mariners feels a bit like The Brian Jonestown Massacre trying to plod on without Anton Newcombe. Anyway, it’s often said the best music grows on you — and that’s certainly true of Verve’s A Storm in Heaven, which went from being the worst five pounds I ever spent at Woolworths (a judgment I made after listening to the haunting blast of the album's very first chord) to the best five pounds I ever spent at Woolworths... and all it took was a year of my life to change my mind.

I’m still trying to work out what Town's new style is, but a hat-trick of 2-0 wins in pre-season with pretty passing football suggests we're aiming to play with a more rhythmic and upbeat tempo with this new line-up.

Those who are excited by the sounds we’re making can, from today, buy tickets to the first two home games of the season — that’s if they haven’t already bought the 23-track album ahead of its much-anticipated release on 10th August.

Modern football demands that you instantly like what’s on show. Artell’s first album wasn’t a massive hit, and the second album is a notoriously hard one to crack, but if he can get a tune out of the band he’s assembled — including some epic bowed-guitar-led riffs from our Icelander, then we’re in for one hell of a record.

UTM!