aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser
#033– Hefner – ‘Pull Yourself Together’ (Too Pure Records ’98)
Dear friends,
to be absolutely frank to you: I never really liked Hefner all too much. They were on heavy rotation with John Peel, and believe me, I often tried to give them a chance, but at the end of the day I always thought they were a bit too ‘arty’, if you know what I mean. Obviously, their music was always on the quieter side, which is alright, of course. But if you don’t sit there on your own, preferably with your headphones on, with a lyric sheet in your hands (‘cos that’s what you need to do if English is not your mother tongue) and try to understand what a band is singing about, the music (alone) often remains rather boring or dull. And this, basically, was the case with Hefner, at least it was for me.
Hefner were founded in 1992, but only in 1996 they recorded their debut single “Another Better Friend”. The record attracted positive underground buzz, and in late 1997 Hefner signed to the legendary Too Pure label, issuing the limited-edition 10″ “The Hefner Soul” the following spring. Then, the band released the full-length “Breaking God’s Heart” in mid-1998; “The Fidelity Wars” appeared a year later. And within all these years Peel was a great admirer and within all these years I listened, and I thought “nah, I don’t really get them”. This, of course, was pre-internet, no lyrics available, I should add!
Now, Rolling Stone, the magazine, back at the time, was issued in Germany (perhaps they did the same elsewhere as well, who knows?) accompanied by a CD, it was either called “New Voices” (which featured – surprise, surprise – unknown bands, most often not too entertaining ones, it must be said) or “Rare Trax”. “Rare Trax” was always theme-based, and the December 1998 issue was titled “1998’s Secret Hits!”. The problem is: I only got my hands on a copy of this CD in the summer of 2000, if memory serves correctly, on a flea market somewhere. And what was on this CD? Yes, “Pull Yourself Together”, the Didgeridoo version thereof, in fact!
I was totally blown away by it immediately …. “this can’t be right, this must be a different Hefner”, I thought! Well, no, it wasn’t, as it turned out: the truth of the matter was, totally unbeknownst to me, the band had already released this post-punk-rhythmic-driven frenzy as a single two years ago, it was, although totally missed by me, heavily championed by both Peel and Steve Lamacq. And rightly so, of course:
mp3: Hefner – Pull Yourself Together
Around the time when I finally encountered this song, Hefner released their “Boxing Hefner” – compilation of singles, which I quickly bought, because I thought there was more excellence I might have missed. This pretty much didn’t turn out to be the case alas, although I would still recommend this compilation today, but “Pull Yourself Together” remains its highlight by quite some distance.
It’s one of those astonishingly simple, musically very basic tunes that somehow sounds rather exceptional, almost in spite of itself … and it always puts a smile on my face whenever I hear it.
I do hope it makes you smile as well!
Enjoy,
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 