Times are oddly difficult if, like some, you opted out of the britpop battle of the mid-1990s', largely simplified as being between Blur and Oasis.

At the time, I havered, wavered and wandered, but in the end I didn't go for either. I was, and still am, to an extent, a Pulp fan. Of course, it's not something you give up and walk away from, but bands change and shift in ways that others don't. For some, it's a natural progression; for some, it's a rude interruption, but if you're in a band, your time in the sun is always limited, and always predicated on things you can't control.

And this is, in the end, what bothers me about music. I can remember the late 1990s' with perfect recall, but ask me to name a significant musical event since, oh, say, 2000, or a band that stand out, and, well, right now, I don't have anything much I could flap in front of your face and say "see! Music still mattered, and was significant, and wore the coolest clothes!"

Of course, given that right now I feel damn old and creaky, this is probably not a surprise to anyone reading this born after, oh, say, 1991. Not that I suspect there are any readers of this age. But suspicion shouldn't exclude the possibility, and so, I offer this, a warning, to young music fans everywhere:

In ten years, it's likely the music that matters to you won't then.

And if it does, more power to you.

The point of all of this is that I finally started taking notice of music properly again last year. I have no idea if anything in particular caused me to actually start caring again, rather than just analysing new music to see what it sounds like from eras gone by - and this is the last refuge of the dying music fan, wherein everything sounds like everything goddamn else - but I think, if I had to make a guess, I'd say it was this.

That link is just for the music. There's a reason for this. Because, in the main, it's the music that matters, not the band, not the videos, not the PR, or the press, or the narrative behind them; all of that will burn under public scrutiny before long, leaving behind only irrelevant ashes, whereas the music doesn't burn. Pulp faded away over time; they had a difficult struggle to prominence achieved by a single catchy tune that took the zeitgeist down the pub for a drink and rolled out at closing time, pissed. With fame came problems; This is Hardcore was, for no apparent reason, too sleazy even for devoted fans, coming as it did without a single purpose or coherence behind it's tracklisting; how exactly do you make the leap from "Help the Aged" to "This is Hardcore" as singles? After that, there was one more album, and then it was into re-release hell, as much as it is a level of hell, and of them all Jarvis Cocker, having cocooned himself in a strange kind of fame, is the only one still in the public eye in any form.

Six years, arguably, in the blaring heat of the limelight, before things started - and your mileage may vary on this - going wrong.

Which brings us neatly back to Reverend and the Makers, who are doing, functionally, what Pulp did 13 years ago; class commentary with catchy rhythm, clever lyrics against addictive sounds. But, if I'm honest with you, something about Reverend and the Makers scares me, and I'm not exactly sure what.

From my understanding of Pulp, it was all about inclusivity, whether across class boundaries (Common People), so-called boundaries of intelligence (Mis-Shapes) or even just about finding something you may not have lost but will always be searching for (Disco 2000). There was a point behind their work, and the point, to me, was that people will always self-define their world into groups, 'similar' and 'different', 'self' versus 'non-self', and even if these groups exist - even if we make them exist - Pulp seemed to me to be about highlighting some of the ridiculousness of this idea. It was a sweet idea, really; Common People was always a song about the inherent stupidity of the British class system, and the pointlessness of it to boot.

Reverend and the Makers, however, seem to have inverted this, or turned it on it's head, so that the division is only ever going to be about self versus the rest of the world. I hear bitterness in their songs, but not the sort of bitterness that will ever actually achieve anything other than galvanising people into realising how bad their lives might just be and how hopeless they are to change them.

All set to a catchy melody.

I'm not saying there's nothing to it, but watch the full video to Heavyweight Champion of the World, and try to see it as anything other than the self being battered down by the outside world until it becomes something so small, and so insignificant, that it almost ceases to matter.

But at the end of the song, it becomes a - and I know I'm overusing the word - catchy chorus, destined if fame takes the song properly in hand, to become a post-pub shouted songline without - crucially - any irony.

For instance, let's compare. Firstly, watch this, which is, frankly, scary in and of itself rather than setting out to shock. When I first heard this song, it crawled up my spine and stayed in my head for two solid weeks, unable to budge. Now, when I hear it, I wonder what the actual point of the song is; yes, teenage, young or unwanted pregnancy takes someone's life and screws it up be changing everything, but there's another layer there which I want to think of as self-referential mockery of their previous single, but, somehow, it's not. In the end, it's one line that picks apart the whole ball of socio-cultural commentary yarn;

Wish you weren't a story of the also rans

That makes things so difficult, because it strips away the individuality of the song's subject, relegating her to being just another 'also-ran' bringing up a child and missing out on what all of her friends are doing.

With, yes, a catchy melody. Which is my point; compare He Said He Loved Me to, of all things, this song, which also stayed stuck in my head for much longer than it should have. It's all in the melody; That's not my name has no, real, point, but it's catchy, and, of all things, fun, whereas He Said He Loved Me is just the bleakness of an apparently wasted life set to the sound of gum-chewing and a bassline that finds you, grabs you, and doesn't let go.

Now, I'm conducting a lot of my music listening via Youtube, which has it's own issues, not least the user comments. I don't feel comfortable commenting on comments, especially from somewhere like Youtube, because every single person on this green earth of ours is entitled to their opinion. But sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder what makes people think their opinions are worth posting. In regard to He Said He Loved Me, user Auroh wrote:

This is Porn of the Ears.

To begin with, fair enough. They like the song, it gets them curiously aroused, fine. The capitalisation is theirs, which initially made me wonder if they were trying to claim that the song is only a cover of a song by a group called Porn of the Ears, but I've discarded this theory because it's only a one-use joke. Now, this is not the comment that I'm interested in; I am in fact interested in commenting on the reply to the comment, made by user burstmatress, who said;

eh yea if ur into child porn or gay pron...totally horrible!!!! I hope this band get assinated especailly the lead singer. they are shit...

Uh-huh.

Let's pick it apart.

(I)I disagree with your opinion
(II) I think because you like this song so much you're gay, or a paedophile
(III) I would like the band to be killed
(IV) Especially the lead singer.

I wish I understood the internet. In my day, far back in the mists of time, comment boards weren't as prevalent - unless you were a usenet user, something I missed out on - and the internet as a whole was just kicking into gear.
Now, ten years on, you can insult people you'll never meet, and insist that their favourite band be killed, just because you feel like it. The question is, if user burstmatress hates the song that much, why would they be checking it out on Youtube? The answer is, of course trolling. Soon, I believe, to become an olympic sport.

My point, which I've wandered away from, is that the music I thought I used to like was bitter, but hopeful. Now, music just seems to be bitter and accepting of that bitterness, as if nothing will change, and I'm wondering; what happened to change things in this way? Is the world that much worse a place now than then that we're seeing reflections from a glass, darkly by the bands out and about at the moment?

One last thing to dispel the bitterness; I have a new song that I can't get out of my head. It's this song, and whatever my opinions of the band, their style, and the way they deploy their influences, it's annoyingly addictive.

See what you think.