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Background: Elastica are the ’90s band reunion we’d love to see but are extremely unlikely to receive. They remain an all-time favorite, not just for their immaculate debut album, but also for the underrated follow-up album, The Menace. Worth revisiting if you haven’t lately. Sadly, the follow-up album promised in this concert preview never materialized, but perhaps there’s a deluxe box set in the works. Hope springs etc.

Elastica: The Band that Fell to Earth

By Robert Cherry

“The fame thing got in the way of everything. It very nearly killed me,” says Justine Frischmann about her initial stint in the spotlight following the release of Elastica’s 1995 self-titled debut that spawned the hit “Connection.” “I was like, ‘I ain’t doing this anymore.’ I was so damaged I couldn’t even listen to music any more, let alone make it. I was just like, ‘I don’t wanna be “Justine from Elastica” anymore, I want to be “Justine.”’”

Meet “Justine,” then. A music fan who loved music so much she wanted to play in a band. Trouble was, the group she assembled—a British art-punk quartet comprising drummer Justin Welch, bassist Annie Holland and Frischmann’s guitarist/foil Donna Matthews—got so big, so fast that it took the fun out of music. “When fame hits it really does start infringing on your reality. Existentially it’s a bizarre spot to be in. All of a sudden you’ve got this alter-ego.”

Then things got bad. Drugs, depression, departures—the full Behind The Music-style menu of rock-and-roll crash and burn. The cracks began to show when Holland walked out during Elastica’s stint on Lollapalooza ’96, alternative rock’s then-premier traveling package tour. When the three remaining members returned to England to record the follow-up to their hit album, the sessions dragged on, the band got drugged up, and Matthews eventually left Elastica after a power struggle.

“You don’t have to survive on the hate; you can embrace the chaos and do something positive with it.”

“We had all this cash [to record the album] and all our heads were [messed up]. In the end, I took a year and a half out, basically just got my head together. At that point I was like, ‘Elastica is no more; I just can’t handle this.’ And I carried on writing music more as therapy than anything.”

The end? Of course not, but this is where the story diverges from the rock-comeback cliché. Elastica is indeed back, but—surprise—the band isn’t a pale version of its former self flogging a tepid rewrite of its old hits. The band reformed in 1999 after Frischmann had a chance meeting with Holland, whom she hadn’t seen since the bassist had walked off Lollapalooza. The two patched things up, and Frischmann organized a rehearsal with Holland, Welch and former Linoleum guitarist Paul Jones—just for fun. Things went so well they scheduled another rehearsal and then another until they had enough songs to complete an album.

“When I got the new band together [which also features keyboardist Dave Bush and keyboardist/bon vivant Mew], we had like $10,000 left and we got to the point where nobody believed Elastica existed any more. It was do or die. Our backs were against the wall, and that’s when we’re at our best. All the expensive studios and all the pressure and all the please her/please him was doing me absolutely no good at all.”

The last-ditch sessions, combined with Frischmann’s basement experiments and tracks recorded during earlier aborted sessions, yielded the aptly titled The Menace, a gleefully uneven collection of scrappy post-punk and ambient tone poems. Both the critics and the fans loved it. More importantly, through the reformation process, Frischmann became “Justine” again: “I just wanted to get back down to earth and remember who I was; remember what I was doing in the music business in the first place.”

And the cycle continues: According to Frischmann, both she and the band have come full circle with Elastica’s first U.S. tour in four years that brings them to the Odeon tonight. “It’s a very healing process, because touring America did us in last time,” she says. “A lot of damage went on and I think we’re in the process of repairing it. The whole band is a lot more natural. We don’t feel like we have to be rock stars; we can just be ourselves.”

Meet the older, wiser “Justine,” then. A music fan currently inspired by Julian Temple’s Sex Pistols documentary, The Filth And The Fury; Francis Ford Coppola’s exploration of man’s dark side, Apocalypse Now; and the example set by straight-talking female rap artists. It all adds up to a more “positive” woman in rock for a new era.

“I was competing with the boys,” admits Frischmann. “I don’t need to play the game on men’s terms. I can do it however I want. I don’t need to be weighted down by the ego trip. Men can keep their balls; women have got their own thing.

“[Johnny Rotten’s] thing was creating out of hatred and chaos. I think the message now should be a little more sophisticated. It’s not ‘No Future,’ it’s ‘No Rules.’ You don’t have to survive on the hate; you can embrace the chaos and do something positive with it. It’s not competition. It’s about communication.”

And The Menace is just the beginning of Elastica’s new message. The band has already recorded five new tracks at London’s Wessex Studios (where, tellingly, the Sex Pistols recorded Never Mind The Bollocks), and Frischmann promises the next album will be out in a more timely manner.

“I’m now back to the point where I’m not writing tunes for the record company or radio stations; and I’m not writing them because I think it’s what the press or the fans want. I’m just writing them so the band has got some new [material] to play so we stay excited.

“I’ve always taken my time and tried to get it right,” she concludes. “I’ve always felt that I’m a music lover first and a music maker second. I have to be in a good place to make music. I can’t fake it.”

©2000 Robert Cherry, all rights reserved