In the world of Shaun Ryder, nothing is simple. Take the recording of 'Amateur Night In The Big Top'. After the Australian leg of the Happy Mondays' reunion tour he went to visit his ex-pat cousin Pete Carroll. They started writing songs together, but within three months he'd been kicked out of the country and banned from returning for three years.
Finally, after much wrangling, he was allowed back and the album was finished - although for his own sake he'd have been better off if the Australian authorities had stuck to their guns. Suffice to say that the story of how he managed to get himself ejected and banned in the first place would be more entertaining than anything here.
Opening track, 'The Story', makes for an ominous start. Seven minutes of Ryder rambling, in a pitifully confused way, over dreary synths about an aeroplane where the movie was "groovy", the seats like "armchairs" and a bloke had some "charlie"; it's not good. As if to highlight the lack of content, the story itself concludes "then we get off the plane and we all just go home." Sadly, this is one of the album's more engaging moments.
Of course, being the dictionary definition of shambolic has always been the Ryder charm. But this time it's different. With the Happy Mondays he was the walking medicine chest who delivered pill-popping poetry, which suggested he'd found the meaning of life. With Black Grape he was the triumphant goon returned, with a wicked sense of humour and a rallying call to join the couldn't-give-a-toss church of Ryder.
Now, spluttering "piss" and "sh*t" during 'Long Legs' or rabidly babbling on 'Clowns' about being beaten to death by people with "big floppy shoes", he's the dribbling old soak talking to himself on a park bench - too shaky to get his Special Brew to his mouth - barely conscious, never mind coherent.
To be fair he's not got a lot to work with. Carroll's vaguely Black Grape-ish grooves invariably ramble more than he does, with no sign of a chorus or point. But it's the state of the great man himself that's truly depressing. If the slurring on 'Murder' (pronounced muurrrerrr) is an attempt to sound like a stroke victim, it's worryingly convincing.
On 'Scooter Girl' he mutters about not knowing "the difference between shit and treacle." Unfortunately Shaun, the rest of us do and it's not hard to spot which one 'Amateur Night In The Big Top' is.
