England Made Me (Black Box Recorder album)

Between 1993 and 1996, vocalist and guitarist Luke Haines released three albums with the Auteurs; New Wave (1993), ''Now I'm a Cowboy (1994) and After Murder Park (1996). After Murder Park'' received critical acclaim but was not as commercially successful as its predecessors. singer Sarah Nixey had been working as a backing vocalist in the band Balloon to harmonize with frontman Ian Bickerton. Bickerton, who wanted more musicians to help the band in a recording studio, recruited Haines and former the Jesus and Mary Chain member John Moore. which Moore enjoyed. Moore coined the band's name while flying home from Spain. Moore persuaded Volume magazine to include a Black Box Recorder track on their next compilation album, prompting Haines to visit Moore at his residence in Little Venice, London, to make noise. ==Recording==

Black Box Recorder went to a basement studio in Camberwell, London, with producer and Auteurs collaborator Phil Vinall, where they recorded "Girl Singing in the Wreckage". Moore was aware of Vinall's earlier work with Haines; he calling Vinall a "somewhat intense individual, and the atmosphere was often dark, bordering on Pinteresque", which he felt was appropriate for their forthcoming album. Hut Records, which had released Haines' earlier work, paid the band an advance fee, allowing them to move sessions to the basement of Milo Studios in Hoxton Square, London. Here, they recorded "New Baby Boom" and "England Made Me", the latter of which was recorded the same day Tony Blair became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Moore said "England Made Me" is "new-slow, new-nightmarish, and new-cruel, but definitely not New Labour". Charlie Inskip, who had worked with Haines, became the band's manager. Sessions concluded in autumn with the recording of "Wonderful Life", "Lord Lucan Is Missing" and "Factory Radio" at Milo Studios. The band and Vinall produced most of the tracks except "Ideal Home", which was solely produced by the band. Several engineers worked on the album; Vinall, Martin Jenkins, Teo Miller, Pete Hofmann and the band. Miller mixed most of the songs while Vinall mixed one of them. The cover of "Up Town Top Ranking" ends with a reverb-enhanced crashing sound, which came from Vinall kicking amplifiers. When they remixed the song at On-U Sound Studios, London, the sounds were made louder. ==Composition and lyrics==

Overview The music of England Made Me has been described as country folk, Jason Ferguson of MTV said "wispy samples will waft through the proceedings or the band will get a little carried away and almost start to rock". "England Made Me" starts with Nixey inflicting pain on insects; Moore called it a "paean to Graham Greene and British seediness"; Sandlin said "Child Psychology" describes a child who is intellectually stunted by irreversible neglect by misguided parents. On "Swinging", Moore said Nixey acted as a Blue Remembered Hills-esque character who persuades boys to jump from a cliff face. "Kidnapping an Heiress" recounts the kidnapping of Patty Hearst; it is sung from the perspective of the Symbionese Liberation Army and includes a reference to The Angry Brigade. The album concludes with "Hated Sunday", which Empire said evokes the work of Morrissey with "its vista of endless, depthless grey days". Ferguson said the addition of four bonus tracks on the US version aided in "extend[ing] the misery" for longer. One of these is a cover of Terry Jacks' 1974 hit "Seasons in the Sun", on which according to Spin Joshua Clover, Nixey sounds "as if she's singing the grocery list", while Ink 19 writer Matthew Moyer said the band "pervert [the song] to its most evil and base nature". Moyer also said "Lord Lucan Is Missing" recalls the work of Baader Meinhoff "but with ten times the sugar". Fletcher said it is the album's sole upbeat song, "and that's probably because the central character (a British nobleman who disappeared after a crime spree) is someone other than the singer". ==Release and promotion==

Nixey lost enthusiasm for working in theatre and was working as a temp across London. She stopped this type of employment a week before the band signed with Chrysalis Records, in December 1997. According to Nixey, A&R representative Gordon Biggins' first words to her asked if she wanted to go solo rather than working with Haines and Moore, who two days earlier had argued and almost disbanded Black Box Recorder until Nixey mediated between them. The band liked Biggins enough to sign with the label. In February and March 1998, Black Box Recorder toured the UK. Chrysalis Records released England Made Me on 20 July 1998. Haines said Street, who was cross-dressing, was showing off his championship belt while his father reproachfully stares at him. Haines said he and Moore used to watch wrestling when they were children until it "got axed because it became too pantomime". Hutchinson's photograph is included in Simon Garfield's book The Wrestling (1996); Garfield put the band in contact with Street to ask his permission to use the photograph for the album. Street was enthusiastic about the prospect, hoping the band would sell a million copies of it. journalist Owen Hatherley said had the image been used, the album would have "truly encapsulated British fascism by adding sport to the litany of untrustworthy outsiders". The band did not tour to promote the album but they performed at the Reading Festival the following month. depicts a girl in a bed who appears "bored and morbidly introspective – [it] tells you most everything you need to know" about the band, according to Sandlin. The video for "Child Psychology", which was directed by Clio Barnard, depicts children in a bath that is located in a forested swamp. "Child Psychology" was banned from MTV and radio stations in the UK due to the lyric "Life is unfair / Kill yourself or get over it". "England Made Me" was released as the album's second single on 6 July 1998. The CD version featured "Factory Radio" and "Child Psychology" as the B-sides, The video for "England Made Me", directed by Sonja Phillips, To promote the single, the band supported Pulp at their show in Finsbury Park, London and performed at the T in the Park festival. England Made Me was included in the career-spanning Life Is Unfair (2018) CD box set alongside the band's other albums. A vinyl edition of this box set was issued the following year. In 2022, "Child Psychology" became a viral sensation on the video platform TikTok; in addition to this, a one-hour looped version was posted on YouTube. Due to the renewed interest in the track, Chrysalis Records posted an edited version of the track to Spotify. Alexis Petridis, writing for SuperDeluxeEdition, attributed the virality to Billie Eilish posting a video of herself enjoying the track. In 2023, England Made Me was re-pressed on vinyl to coincide with the album's 25th anniversary. ==Reception==

Reviews of England Made Me were mixed. According to Swihart, though the album does not immediately appear to be a satirical statement on "anything, but rather an exquisite, even upbeat, bit of pop ... [e]ven when Black Box Recorder do inject a bit of pop cheerfulness into the music, it is seemingly done ironically". Sandlin said at the halfway point, the album slips into "barely-tolerable redundancy" as it loses the "casual, deliberate momentum it'd been building upon". Empire said Nixey's "opiated debutante tones take Haines' odium to new, discomfiting extremes", Robert Christgau in The Village Voice said Nixey has a "rich, delicate, contained" voice that is "so neurotic that to expect her to give of herself would be meaningless". According to Jamie Kiffel of Lollipop Magazine; "rarely do the lyrics get as specific as their simple singability would imply" as exemplified by "England Made Me". He added the "stories are weird, realistic, and leave plenty of room for your mind to color in the humor with a black marker". Sandlin wrote the band "just keep churning out more quaint songs about resigned depression" and after a while, the listener is "left with empty sorrow and overly reflective gobbledygook". England Made Me charted at number 110 on the UK Albums Chart, and "Child Psychology" and "England Made Me" peaked at numbers 82 and 89, respectively, on the UK Singles Chart. ==Track listing==

All songs written by Luke Haines and John Moore, except for where noted. • "Girl Singing in the Wreckage" – 2:42 • "England Made Me" – 4:00 • "New Baby Boom" – 2:10 • "It's Only the End of the World" – 5:21 • "Ideal Home" – 2:39 • "Child Psychology" – 4:08 • "I. C. One Female" – 2:19 • "Up Town Top Ranking" (Althea Forrest, Donna Reid) – 3:57 • "Swinging" – 3:52 • "Kidnapping an Heiress" – 2:46 • "Hated Sunday" – 3:16 ==Personnel==

Personnel per booklet. Black Box Recorder • Luke Haines – instruments • Sarah Nixey – vocals • John Moore – instruments Production and design • Black Box Recorder – producer, engineer (track 8) • Phil Vinall – producer (all except track 5), engineer (track 1), mixing (track 1) • Martin Jenkins – engineer (tracks 2, 3, 10 and 11) • Teo Miller – mixing (tracks 2–11), engineer (tracks 4 and 6) • Pete Hofmann – engineer (track 5, 7 and 9) • BLAM – sleeve design • Dennis Hutchinson – cover photograph • RIP – band photograph • Barnaby's Photo Library – beachy head photographs ==Charts==