Sound Bites: 'Mirror Kissers' by The Cribs

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzqZborBWtA&list=RDGzqZborBWtA&start_radio=1

After many, many years, I recently logged back into my Spotify account, only to be confronted or rather re-confronted with playlists I made back in the early 2010s. Oh dear, I thought, this could be embarrassing. Looking back through old choices in this way is almost like encountering one’s own doppleganger, particularly if like me you’d completely forgotten you made the playlists in the first place. Most of my choices, though, I would say have stood the test of time and are definitely still songs I’d continue listening to today. One of the delights I unearthed from the playlist, indeed, was Mirror Kissers by The Cribs, who are, funnily enough, currently touring the country again, and, in fact, playing at nearby Truck Festival this summer. I was surprised to see on Spotify that their most listened to song is Men’s Needs, which I personally would consider second to Mirror Kissers, and maybe even third behind Hey Scenesters! the first track of their 2005 debut album New Fellas. 

There was a certain poetry in finding this band again on a day when Andy Burnham, self-appointed, self-annointed King of the North, gave a keynote speech about introducing a No10 North and devolving powers of government across the country. The poetry is that The Cribs hail from Wakefield, which even though is not in Burnham’s Lancashire is still in the North, and it just seemed fitting on a day when the country is discussing how it redistributes power and governance northwards that The Cribs should pop up on my playlist. At any rate, how to describe The Cribs? They’re very much a kind of northern Libertines meets The Strokes in a bad mood; for example, the cover of New Fellas features one of the band members swigging from a bottle of beer, which although innocent enough, is style a rock’n’roll trope I just don’t think we see anymore as record companies know that our attitudes to alcohol have changed. There’s more chance of seeing your favourite frontman sipping a matcha tea in a wooly hat he's knitted himself on the front cover of their band’s latest album as opposed to anything with a whiff of a toxin in it. It’s funny that such an image as a rock musician swigging a beer could already seem somehow dated. 

However, I suppose the other poetry to Mirror Kissers, and something about the track which has definitely not aged, is how it invokes the myth of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection and after pining away for himself, became a flower, the Narcissus. It reminds me of Heaney’s poem Personal Helicon in which he mentions ‘big-eyed Narcissus’ as he looks down into a well. So, I like Mirrors Kissers for its literary echoes (whether they were intended by the band or not) and how the track has not only not aged, but seems more salient than ever – do we live in a world of mirror kissers more than ever? Has social media turned us all into a world of Narcissi? 

At any rate, this track is the apotheosis of early noughties energetic, punk rocky, high octane, squeaky guitar feedbacked indie-rock. No mean feat in 3 minutes 38 seconds. And that we can only make out about 50% of the lyrics is rendered irrelevant by the sheer tempo, distorted riffs and shouty in-your-face-ness of the entire endeavour.