McCarthy - Red Sleeping Beauty live

It’s funny how often the phrase ‘critically-acclaimed’ is paired up with the word ‘neglected’ when looking back on bands from the past. Some bands just don’t reach their potential through a mixture of poor decisions and bad luck. Some bands get to a certain point then lose their momentum or are rendered pointless by the world moving on around them. Some bands have neglect built into them; it’s coded in their DNA. In many ways I count the critically-acclaimed, but neglected McCarthy in the final group. Ultimately, there was no way in the world they were ever going to end up anything but ‘neglected’. Their sound, a mixture of glistening, post-Marr hi-life guitar and sometime Motown beats topped off with weirdly pre-pubescent vocals was never going to get the postman whistling. Coupled with the band’s confrontational, satirical lyrical approach, it was even more damning, and the world’s stadia and festival stages never beckoned to McCarthy.


Instead, they exist in a limbo where they are periodically dragged back into the light to represent all those bands ignored by many and loved by few. We all have our particular favourites in that category; McCarthy happen to be one of mine. I love their sound. I love their intelligence. I love their wit and humour. All these years later they still make me laugh.