Send "The Streets " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Back in the early 00s, Mike Skinner and James Murphy both seemed like transformative figures: two charismatic producer/talkers with rhythm, intelligence, senses of humor, and senses of gravitas. Both were innovators who existed at once inside and outside a pair of emerging genres (grime and dance-punk, respectively), and both focused so fully on their own tiny corners of existence that they made those experiences tangible to people who only had the slightest idea what they were talking about. Now, a decade later, both are preparing to say goodbye to their signature projects.Skinner's landmark debut, Original Pirate Material, hit just months before LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge" single, but the follow-up, A Grand Don't Come for Free, arguably holds up better today. A staggering conceptual LP, the record was a grounded and powerful piece of linear storytelling that found Skinner in a more challenging and ambitious mode. But in that album's wake, Skinner adapated a much less relatable and charismatic persona, releasing a pair of disappointing LPs that squashed his accumulated goodwill. The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living was a near-fatal cocaine-and-tabloids tantrum, an attempt to shed light on celeb-culture shallowness that simply wound up indulging in it. And Everything Is Borrowed was even stranger, an amber-hued pastorale that made no sense at all. Now, convinced he's got nothing left to say, Skinner gives us Computers and Blues. A collection of lesser beats and hooks that somewhat returns to Original Pirate Material's sonics, Computers and Blues sadly trades that record's wonderful sense of place for a foggy vagueness that leaves Skinner's insights mostly impenetrable. And yet, after the last two albums, it feels something like a return to form, actually coming closer to the particular weird spark of Skinner's debut than anything he's released since. Even the image of the luxury apartment building on the cover echoes the lonely tenement on his first album. And as a series of disconnected sketches with cheap bedroom beats, Computers and Blues is not without its charm....full text |
| Bbc |
| After five albums recording as The Streets, Brummie exile Mike Skinner has spat his last rap and built his last beat. He should be proud: Dylan Mills aside there hasn’t been another consistently exciting and commercially successful urban UK voice to touch him over the last decade. It’s fitting that Skinner chooses now to skank off into the sunset to make films and TV, or just bang out Tweets and blog posts, as he may just have produced his best album. Original Pirate Material had the energy, A Grand Don’t Come for Free took him to the big time, and Everything Is Borrowed had the maturity and at times epic sense of perspective. This album sums it all up with a wink, a sigh, and some crucial dance moves. As is customary for a Streets album, the start absolutely smacks it. Outside Inside is a deranged shuffle replete with analogue bleeps, a lead riff that’s half Vampire Weekend, half the theme music from Rainbow, and packs some terrific submerged bass. It’s busy, but has the deep complexity of a classic Roots Manuva tune....full text |
| Nme |
| “I’m packing up my desk/Put it into boxes/Knock out the lights/Lock the locks and leave/I’ll leave one evening, and be seen off by a party for my parting in a bar”, runs ‘Lock The Locks’, the serene, bubbling house closer of ‘the last Streets album’. Such is the mood of Mike Skinner’s resignation letter: relieved. With its pre-ambling three years of huffing, puffing and blowing his own – creative, possibly literal – house down, what else would you expect? Following two albums of voyeuristic tabloid pranging and eventual bare-boned reflection, ‘Computers And Blues’ is an attempted update of Skinner’s less troubled, coquettish early days. From its cover in, there’s a knowing, bustling swagger to The Streets’ finale, if only in its relishing of a quick dart for the exit. ‘Going Through Hell’ is as blatant a balls-out final lap siren as he can muster, with Robert Harvey (the gobby lad from The Music) leering like a drunken spectre. Overdriven slam beats – like a cidery ‘99 Problems’ – wade in all brash and bolshy, with Skinner, in black, biblical verse, sneering to the heavens one last time....full text |
The Streets lyrics
