Wakefield’s premier mid-fi band and unsung cult heroes of the indie-punk persuasion The Cribs have been tearing into the scene for a career-spanning 14 or so years. Having released their debut album to critical acclaim in 2003, the trio of brothers have exploded their way out of West Yorkshire and through the underbelly of the English underground garage-rock frontier.
Their magnificently sweaty lyrics, bloodied guitar strings, near-death mosh pits, and fleshy live sets have a quality of rawness and realness you’ll be hard pressed to find with anyone else, a great sense of hazardous charm flitting the band. Frontmen and twins Ryan and Gary Jarman are both the Lennon/McCartney and Jekyll/Hyde of indie-punk deity status, their band producing searing, angsty, fiery guitar music that sets souls and cities alight. Here are ten of their best and greatest songs.
10. We Share the Same Skies // Ignore the Ignorant
The song starts in literally the best way imaginable and possible: with a mind-blowing riff from the one and only Johnny Marr. One for the more melancholy and sombre-hearted, ‘We Share the Same Skies’ is built entirely upon Marr’s riff with an obvious general sonic semblance to The Smiths. About the song’s composition, Marr had stated: “I had this riff, and it was really super cool, and normally I’d just be carrying it around to everybody, but I was at Gary [Jarman]’s the next day, just playing it in the basement, and that was the genesis of the song. Just like what Gary said, as it should, you don’t need to write a complete song when you have three other songwriters… because they’re gonna make it better, you know.” With chiming guitars and verses that ache with a sense of loneliness and isolation, “it was no surprise” at all that Marr really made this song become one of The Cribs’ greats.