Album: The It Girl
Label: Indolent
Original Release Date: 4th May, 1996
Purchase Date: 25th September, 2011
Record Shop: Music and Video Exchange, Notting Hill
As Tammy Wynette once sang, “Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman.” It seems unlikely, but maybe she was talking about the testerone-fuelled Britpop movement that would arrive around 25 years later. It’s reductive and unfair to dismiss Britpop as dumb, misogynist and ruled by knuckle-draggers like Oasis, but there’s no denying it hit its stride in the era of FHM, ladettes and football coming home. The It Girl was released in May 1996, just a month before England hosted the European Championships.
As such, it’s hard to ignore the fact that Sleeper were led by Louise Wener, who was – and still very much is – a woman. In more recent interviews, Wener has remarked how annoyed she was that every article on Sleeper focused on her gender and that all she wanted to do was play in a band. However, it was clearly playing on her mind around the time of The It Girl; more than one song is a third-person look at the life of a woman, with the opening line of Lie Detector telling us, “She’s a movie star arrangement,” before asking “How come everyone suspects her?” More female frustrations are released on single, What Do I Do Now?, which tells the story of a break-up and wonders, “Was it when I said I wanted to have children?”
What tends to be forgotten – and let’s be honest, I’ve not mentioned it until the third paragraph; I’m no better – is that The It Girl is a very listenable record with some great songs. It contains four singles (Sale Of The Century, What Do I Do Now?, Statuesque and Nice Guy Eddie) which are synonymous with the Britpop era and rattles through its playing time.
I’d imagine that if you were a teenage girl in 1996 (I was neither teenage nor a girl), Louise Wener would have been just the kind of big-sister role model you’d have wanted. Simply because in a male-dominated industry, she didn’t trade in on being a woman yet didn’t shy away from talking about being one.
Anyway, I’m one of those terrible right-on types who’s so afraid of being seen as discriminatory I’m liable to go completely the other way and make an idiot of myself, so let’s talk more about the band. Sleeper were a second-division Britpop band, but that’s really no bad thing. While Pulp and Suede can play triumphant reunion gigs, Sleeper have to make do with being fondly remembered by a select few and the odd blog entry. The It Girl stands the test of time remarkably well, and it’s difficult not to sing along to the singles, even after all these years. If you’ve got it, dig it out (it’s on Spotify too, though strangely, the track listing isn't in the correct order and the year of release is wrong) and give it a spin, I bet you’ll be surprised at how much you enjoy it. Wener’s often-hushed vocals are distinctive and although she’s no Jarvis Cocker, she chronicles twentysomething life in 90s Britain with a keen eye for detail.
What happened next?
Using writer’s friend, Wikipedia, it looks as if guitarist Jon Stewart is now teaching at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music. Original bass player Diid Osman is now an artist manager, having briefly joined Dubstar after Sleeper (now there’s another band worthy of a blog entry). Wener has written four novels and an autobiography as well as teaching. She recently cropped up on a Word Magazine podcast talking about her part in the Britpop wars, which I can highly recommend.
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