The Streets - EverythingIs Borrowed

Tue 28th Oct, 2008 in Music Reviews

Everything is Borrowed is one of those records that convinces you that the more people who hear it, the better the world could be. It’s a feeling you wouldn’t have got from its predecessor A Hard Way to Make an Easy Living.

Mike Skinner has managed to further confirm the claim that he is one of the best, most agile wordsmiths going around. And as a listener you feel better knowing that he hasn’t been beaten down by celebrity, popularity and image. There’s recognition of things bigger here.

Musically, most backing tracks are played with live instrumentation. This doesn’t necessarily lend an organic feel to the music. It’s still sparse, the focus firmly on his heavy words. There are exceptions to this – namely the opening and closing tracks. Everything is Borrowed opens with a dreamy swirl of an organ line that leads into the fresh realisation that “I came to this world with nothing, and I’ll leave with nothing but love, everything else is just borrowed.”

It’s a total turnaround from the sarcasm and discontent he preached about only a year or two ago. Ending the album, The Escapist is also lush and tangential to the nine songs before it. It’s packed with textures that float behind his surreal dreamscape and back-up vocals that drip with the atmosphere the song pushes for.

Between these moments, there’s a sparseness that has gradually appeared over the course of each album since Original Pirate Material. The message is central and Skinner doesn’t need to prove he’s a master producer who can turn samples into ear candy. He’s got something more important to say now.

Skinner’s current headspace, combined with his searching personality, is intrinsic to each record. Everything is Borrowed is a little different. This time you can tell his outlook is different, but there’s no lyric that ties his ideas or his stories to any place or time. There’s respect-the-earth messages in The Way of the Dodo, paeans to his friends in The Sherry End, anti-religious, live by your own rules doctrines in Alleged Legends and more life-affirmation in the minor-gem Everybody Hurts.

Everything Is Borrowed is certainly more reminiscent of Original Pirate Material than the two albums that followed. While the content of Easy Way… was overly obnoxious, here he’s communicating something that people should hear. We’ll wait for a fifth (and final) album, that’s apparently going to be darker. For now, though, he sounds contented with his journey.

Everything Is Borrowed is out now on Warner Music.