Doesn't NME often do that sort of thing? I remember them raving about The Moldy Peaches, I think they gave the album a good review, then a couple of months later I read a review of someone else's album and they said something along the lines of them being even shitter than The Moldy Peaches.

I wouldn't give either of them anything more than a 5!

I remember being VERY ANNOYED at some of the journos working for the NME and Select around '97-'99, it did seem like they had an orchestrated campaign against anything even vaguely arty or weird.

To give a bit of balance, while I fucking *loved* Venini, I have a copy of their full-length demo "album" (for reasons I'm not going to go into without Mark's permission) which I do still listen to semi-regularly, well, at the time, me and a friend played bits of it to a whole bunch of people we knew - not Pulp fans, in the main, or not hardcore enough to know Russell at any rate - and apart from said friend, who was quickly smitten, otherwise the reaction was uniformly terrible.

Postcard, Roxy, Hoboken*, Mon Camion, Carnival Star, Unshaker, Amsterdam Sam: we loved these, and yet they never garnered anything approaching a positive reaction that I can remember; the reactions I do remember ranged from indifference to real, annoyed hostility, in the style of the hatchet jobs from the weeklies mentioned up there. I think it's just a particular combination of musical cues - quite confrontational, low-tech arrangements and productions and sounds, the nature of Debbie's voice - that, taken together, somehow got people's backs up. Without them knowing any context, quite a few people reacted against them instinctively, assuming them to be pretentious middle class art students. (Obviously, quite a few of these people were themselves pretentious middle-class art students etc.)

Perhaps the weight of expectations over this being the first proper post-Pulp project, and critics' disappointment that the "missing ingredient" lost between His 'n' Hers and This Is Hardcore didn't really manifest itself in Venini, might have made them keener to deliver a kicking, I don't know. But I do know that a bunch of people with no agenda, "indie fans" who I'd expected to lap up Venini and make them a success, just weren't impressed.


* This one was my favourite, for some reason, but my friend (mentioned above) named it as the one song on the album he couldn't abide.

Steve Devereux wrote:

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I have a copy of their full-length demo "album" (for reasons I'm not going to go into without Mark's permission)

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Fine by me!

Thanks for the insight too. I always laboured under the impression that more people would have got into Venini had they had a chance to hear them, and that there was a gap in the market with most indie music at that time being so drab and dull. From what you say though, I may have been somewhat wide of the mark!

Hi!  Can anyone post the Unshaker EP again?  I would love to be able to hear it!  Much thanks!

Can I get in on that? For some reason I haven't heard any venini other than Carnival Star

I'd also be interested in this. I have about 3 or 4 of their songs I think but nothing from the Unshaker EP

Songs from the Unshaker EP and the only song I can find on Youtube called "Carnival Star" are all amazing. However, the link for Postcard seemed to be invalid now. It makes me feel bad that I can only request things but never share anything interesting with you because I don't have any, but I still can't resist my curiosity.

I don't think they're already there.

Should say the 2007 account