Fleece And Firkin, Bristol. May 1995: Melody Maker
My Life Storyhave two things working in their favour. One is Jake Shillingford's utterly driven belief that these sounds, these things, these outfits, this pop can still matter. Of course, in any objective sense they don't matter; they're merely a nostalgia show for those who NEED this kind of thing, for those who, when faced with the infinite pop possibilities that 1995 affords us, choose instead to tether their imagination to some 30-year-old notion of pant-splitting cool.
At least, that's what I was gonna say. But I look in Jake's eyes and f***, he MEANS it. His conviction is infectious, and before I know it all my sub-futurist hooey is drowned in a sea of shimmy and shake.
Really, there isn't enough of this tuff in the world. Most retro Britpop exhumes the same old traditional guitar-bass-drums format, while My Life Story are a supernova with a backing orchestra and Christ, evenDes O'Connor doesn't try and get away with that shit any more. Jake's voice is so dripping with Sixties, sideburned archness it's genuinelt shocking. I mean, people just don't SOUND like this anymore. Or don't have the guts to. Or don't realise that some pop works best by being personality based. That's the kind of band My Life Story want to be. And that's how they win through. It's music to put on as you doll yourself up; music that instantaneously dramatises every moment of the night.
At the bar I start to move in slow motion like I'm in the video. Come on, we all do it in the shower. Don't we? Errr, shit. Well, y'know what I mean. Fantastic.

AMOS (4) Dingwalls, London: Melody Maker, March 1996
"I'm the King," flourishes the boy with stars in his eyes and a face daubed with that glittery greasepaint that goes by the brand name "Glamour", "of all the dreams that you never had". It's not, of course, strictly true.
Because Jake Shillingford, moueing his shiny-eyed moues like a musical theatre leading-man and swooping a Marks and Sparks bag of confetti over the string section and heroically gum-chomping bassist, is, in fact, the complete opposite. The reason the audience love My Life Story so much and so hard - and tonight they're bellowing along verse and chorus to "Motorcade" and "Funny Ha Ha" like they'd heard Jake was expanding from 11 to 200 pieces and holding auditions right here - is that Shillingford, non-star in a bespoke flash coat, is the cobbled-together, corny-joke, knoceked-up-in-a-bedroom curator of all the dreams we have had.
Dreams of which we never tire. Dreams that boys like Jake will do up in ribbons and awkward swagger for us like no-one else can - until, one day soon, I suspect, a bunch of inhumanly confident Swedish friends of the Cardigans turn up in Camden doing it better. Dreams so real that Jake Shillingford's merest sketches leave us thrilled to imagine - in everything that's missing - the Brett Anderson arrogance; the glittering, immodest Marc Almond-isms that make camp and cabaret bite back; the sound of "God and all his angels making that funny exploding noise in your head", as a glitteringly immodest man once said. We cheer regardless. We cheer harder when Jake stops, dimpling, to point out his favourite lyrics: "You've got to be obscene to be ob-heard"; "I did the dishes and she dished the dirt." Pure naffness, objectively. But he loves them so hard we agree.
And we forgive the bits that don't belong - the ropey sound, the flat notes, the voice that rarely matches the butterscotch river in Jake's head, the songs that are often all garnish and no dish, conjured up by a man immutably in love with garnish, and flourish and ta-DAAA, to make way for a tune. Only with "Mr. Boyd", all pretty-melody staircases and Beatles-majestic brass crescendoes, does the band find one that soars.
But there's something about My Life Story tonight that makes nonsense of the strict truth, be it fact that Swinging London never was or that the bum notes fall short of the dream. Maybe it's because, like Gene, My Life Story palpably can't wait to get the wrapping off, forever arriving breathlessly at their own songs in wobbly mid-soar.
Give Jake credit - and I'd love to see what he'd do with a decent line of credit - for a night that clambers towards glory harder than a budget Bayreuth in Bayswater.

The Garage, London. New Years Eve 1995: Melody Maker
Don't expect introductions. There's no news. My Life Story remain unchanged, effulgent and panoramic, priceless chiefs of self-belief: I really couldn't bear to do the "soaring, cinematic orchestral chamber-pop fronted by gap-toothed nouveau dandy with charm as long as your arm and 40 years of modern pop and all its possibilities stuiffed in his blazer pocket" bit all over again, thinning out a spark for for the sake of the slowcoaches - listen! Sparklers to the heart. Things left to achieve. On New Year's Eve My Life Story are Staggering.
I was too top-heavy with things passed and beer and things coming and whisky to catch where this was supposed to have been published, or who by, but apparantly Jake Shillingford, My Life Story's urbane epicentre, has been voted fifth - FIFTH! - brightest rising star to watch in 1996, in some chart of 100 people drawn from the worlds of pop, fashion and media. (In case you're interested, Dani Behr was fourth; sixth was the woman who plays Tiffany In "Eastenders". Jake soaks up our charitable cheers: "I tell you, " he mutters, "I was pleased to be sandwiched between those two.")
But what rankles a little is he's too used to this sort of thing: promises, promises. I can think of no band who've spent longer poised, latent, potent, no more damning indictment of the English A&R system. Just now, My Life Story, a band who have critics eating out of their laps, who can do things to people's lives and the manner in which they pass through them that you would barely believe if you could but see them happen, are - bafflingly, outrageously - without a record deal. This changeover of calendars, then, must be well welcome, a fresh start, if only symbolically. It's 10 to 12.
And so. His hourglass in his hand, his scythe by his side, Old Father Time, he leads them on...Jake's been phoning the speaking clock on his mobile, but it's engaged; he winds up an alarm clock and waits. "Angel", their most balletic ballad, spreads its wings. Slow dissolve: sad things. Old friends' faces, lives left lying around. Checked watches everywhere. And finally, the lights flare, the confetti comes down, the balloons are moving, and we fall through into a poised, pregnant new year, prepared for all the cross words and crying, but aware of how open things (still) are, and where we might be by high summer, or when the birds return, or this time tomorrow, and mindful of what can happen when you leave your heart unlocked, or when you wake up early and go walking.
I suppose this is their year. See, if My Life Story fail now, the game's up, I really think we'll all be forced to become grown-ups and grumble into the sunset, chastised, knowing better. If it happens, feel free to spend the summer smiling into streams, watching the light and the water make patterns, horseriding, whatever.

King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow. August 1996: Melody Maker
"This is 'Mr. Boyd'. It's about asking a rather Victorian gentleman if I could f*** his daughter."
And they say romance is dead. Til now, My Life Story have been a lesson in disillusionment. Like the goddesses that spark a thousand fevered fantasies, confrontation with the dull actuality of their sound dampens the ardour kindled by initial exposure to The Idea. Stumbling across Jake Shillingford outlining his Grand Plan on a show dedicated to unsigned bands in '92, I leapt from my chair and DANCED, only to send 'Mornington Crescent' frisbeeing out the window after four listens last year. First off the blocks, perhaps, in the race to swamp pop with a surfeit of strings, but deservedly lapped by later arrivistes - Jack, the Divine Comedy, Tindersticks.
"You Don't Sparkle" was their anthem for the wrong reasons; previously eithet gratingly garish in their swashbuckling flamboyance or insufficiently effervescent, too arch or nor knowing enough, they were hampered by an inexplicable smallness of approach ("12 Reasons Why I Love Her"? I can think of 1,000, and I'm incapable of love).
Perhaps desperation was the spur MLS needed, because somehow, somewhere along the line, they've become one of the best live bands in this stinking pus-hole of a country.
Strength in numbers; while Suede and the Divine Comedy have settled for scaling down their operation live, Shillingford's dragged the whole band along, cramming all 11 members onto King Tut's Lilliputian stage. I still have reservations; the strict adherence to conventional songwriting rules means their numbers all follow the same, rigid route, like greyhounds dashing round the circuit in tandem - strange and saddening that the potentially limitless possibilities of the band's dynamic are inadequately exploited; and there's no drift or friction (a la Tindersticks' "Talk To Me") and, as such, no drama. But for now, florid melodrama will do.
Possibly I'm going to find the second LP every bit as unpalatable as the first, and realise that the sheer physicality of their spirited performance has swayed me for one night only. It's difficult to remain unmoved, even by their simplest symphonies, at this range - the dizzying velocity of "Motorcade", or the capsized poignancy of the newer paterial (I don't catch names). Or to hate any band gifting their audience with boxes of love hearts, particularly since everyone forgot my birthday this year.
And Jake is a consummate frontman, still not quite Vegas enough (only one costume change), but endearingly glitzy and ribald in equal measures.
I didn't want to like MLS - in many ways their agenda is a ruinous one. But that's another story, concerning the true nature of the malaise afflicting pop and the awful truth about middle-class white boys. And maybe, just maybe, steered and consumed corectly, they'll be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
And I'm not just saying that because they give me sweeties.

LA2, London. May 1996: Melody Maker
My Life Story ("A very violent band, the acoustic bastards. They stab you with violin bows, so applaud for all you're worth" - Lauren) set the evening spinning like a mirror-ball again. After they play, someone tells me they find them too ostentatious, which is rather like criticising coffee for being high in caffeine, or uranium for its radioactivity. Ostentation is what they do. From the moment Jake Shillingford bombs on stage like James Bond, to his departure in a flurry of grapes and confetti, they're utterly beguiling. Just having sommany people on stage is an act of glorious decadence and that's before you notice Jake's mirror-perfect self-absorption, so intense it's a wonder he doesnt clone himself right there on stage. Brett and Shirley, Marc and Jarvis - the gang's all here as he stomps through a series of terrace chants for Flash Boys United, all covered in glitter from head to toe. Again there's hidden depths - a malice and tragedy under the dazzle of songs like "You Don't Sparkle", present in the flare of a nostril, the serious sigh. But by the end, the band are plucking grapes for each other off a bunch, the audience are baying for flesh and it's beginning to look like "Caligula" up there. Let's just say "narcissistic splendour" in awed tones and pull away.
"God save the f***ing NME." Now that's something you don't hear much. If Kenickie and My Life Story have been the perfect guests, Steven Jones is the one who throws a punch at the host then throws up in the punch.

Ronnie Scott's, London. August 1996: New Musical Express
It's Jarvis Cocker's fault. The moment he sashayed into the public's affections, the floodgates opened. Suddenly every skinny fellow with a basic level of literacy assumed they could repeat the trick if they acted camp and pretended to be clever. Not entirely bad news, admittedly - The Divine Comedy benefited as a result. Unfortunately it also gave rise to chancers like My Life Story.
So, singer Jake Shillibgford is another Mockney labouring under the delusion that London isn't a urine-stained hellhole, but a place of indescribable charm. And amidst the obligatory string section and blare of brass, he attempts to entertain us with some outdated notions of vaudeville. Image-wise that entails wearing satin outfits ad looking like Modern Romance, the greased-up contemporaries of Haircut 100.
Personality-wise, it means that Jake is duty-bound to trot out innuendoes about sucking on Fisherman's Friends. Still, expecting Wildean wit from a man in baggy leather trousers was always going to be asking a lot.
And then there's the songs - mostly startlingly unoriginal vignettes of housewives on Valium. It's Scott Walker singing Blur, then deciding that's not a very good idea. For all the violinists' enthusiasm and Jake's arm-stretching bravado, My Life Story sound hollow. Songs like 'Marriage Blister' and 'HeavenIn A Suitcase' seem to exist solely to remind us that Dexy's Midnight Runners really were rather good.
Their current single ('12 Reasons Why I Love You') might have led you to hope for an evening of Divine Comedy. The reality's more of a diabolical tragedy.

Sheffield University. April 1995: New Musical Express
Arrogant, cord-jacketed wanker number 872 strolls by, the entire late 20-something population of Sheffield University fights its way into the tiniest venue on campus, and the 12 members of My Life Story assemble on a stage the size of a fag packet. You can't help but wonder why.
Maybe if the curent musical climate was geared less towards resurrecting Britpop and more in favour of curb-crawling mobile disco sleazeathons, My Life Story would have gone ballistic. And it would have helped their ascendency somewhat if Pulp didn't exist and Hans Zimmer had done all the Bond themees.
But let's not burst the bubble of the Arran-jumper-tucked-into-my-slacks brigade, for whom Jake 'M&S' Shillingford is the epitome of bohemian cool and 'Mornington Crescent' is this year's 'What's Going On'. Instead, let's admire the way said frontman holds court wittily on the subject of - and how rock is this? - the rpice of violin strings and how the string section itself behaves like Miranda Sex Garden on disco biscuits doing Quo impressions.
And while the elements do occasionally come together like Jellyfish with more than half a clue, most notably on breakthrough single 'Girl A, Girl B, Boy C' and album closer 'Angel', there's constant sense that this is sub-Cocker in every sense. Such musical pretensions are only going to bond the combo ever-tighter to their beloved gutter-existences, while the likes of the Bluetones go on to sell out arenas and get blow-jobs with their alarm calls.
My Life Story? More "Reader's Digest" than "Pulp Fiction" I'm afraid.

The Splash Club, London. September 1995: Melody Maker
Stepping from the Water Rats' bar to the venue is, tonight, a bizarrely disorientating sensation. Fine strands of rouge tinsel have been hung from the alcove, especially for the occasion. As you brush them aside, it feels, appropriately, like "Stars in Your Eyes".
Tonight - most acutely demonstrated by Gretschen Hofner's interest in cross-dressing - is wholly about iconography and reinvention. Their forthcoming single, "Crow In Heels", for which this is a launch party, alludes to this: a new character, a new personality trait, is bequeathed with each different pair of footwear: "You extend from what you walk in. In heels you are immortal/ Like a whore in plain black stilletos/ You are a goddess in those Roman sandals".
This contrivance even extends to the venue, which has been dressed up, disguised. Scarlet shoes have been hung from each chandelier. Tinsel (that old chestnut, that most blatant signifier for cheap, faded glamour) is strewn everywhere, cast on the floor and across the monitors, ultimately to be crushed and torn under our feet (as a metaphor for broken dreams and being doomed to failure, presumably). At their merchandise stand, a Gretschen Hofner T-shirt is draped from a cardboard cut-out of Marilyn Monroe.
Yet, while their glamour-spattered rockabilly is fairly entertaining, by the end of their set the charade falls apart. Their glacier stares shift to giggles, drama to farce. With their final song, a man pushes through the crowd to the front of the stage, aims a gun. Fires! The band tumble to the floor...except, we knew all along, he was shooting blanks. Then they play encores.
A truncated incarnation of My Life Story (or, as they're billed, "An acoustic set from Jake Shillingford") played first but I've rarely heard them so icily captivating, so achingly beautiful - beauty, tonight, being tragic princesses, Audrey Hepburn, black-and-white flicks, the death os summer, grace and glaciers. They get the honours. After this, anything at all would have seemed frivolous.

ULU, London. February 14th 1997: Melody Maker
Poor Orlando. Suddenly, I believe that they might be telling the truth in all their self-pitying songs about being unloved outsiders. Surely, if they had any real friends, one of them would by now have gently pointed out to them what they're doing can never work. After all, half-hearted soul is a contradiction in terms.
The claim that Romo was/is not an early-Eighties revival seems more laughable then ever. Orlando's sound is shamelessly two parts Culture Club, one part Soft Cell. However, the former had a singer with a fine voice and the latter had one who knew how to work within his limitations. Timothy Mark, a painfully awkward and inhibited presence onstage, has neither of those talents. It's a pity, because some of the songs are actually pretty damn good. Listen to the genuinely poignant "Nature's Hated" , for instance, and you sense that this could really be special - if only David McAlmont were singing it. Unfortunatly, it's Orlando up there, so it's rather like hearing Neil Tennant trying to perform the hits of Smokey Robinson.
Orlando's shortcominggs are cruelly highlighted by the contrast with My Life Story, whose harshest detractors could hardly claim that they lack charisma. If anything, Jake Shillingford's instinctive showmanship has sometimes distracted attention from the subtleties in his songwriting. The start of tonight's show is thus somewhat surprising. Keyboard player Danny Turner ambles onstage, sits at the electric piano and begins to play one of My Life Story's most subdued songs, "Silently Screaming". Then Jake slowly strolls out of the shadows, stands still next to Turner, and sings the song's tormented, lonely words. In the mic stand-twirling, glitter encrusted world of My Life Story, that's pretty radical.
Much of what follows supports the suspicion that Jake may be keen to tone down My Life Story's trademark flamboyance, or at least divert attention to the substance behind the sparkle. The hidden depths have always been there; "The King Of Kissingdom", for example, is a glorious glam stomp which also happens to be the sharpest double-edged look at drugs since Pulp's "Sorted For E's and Wizz". MLS certainly haven't lost their sense of fun (as you'll gather from the set list), but many of the songs from the forthcoming "The Golden Mile" album nevertheless emphasise that Shillingford is fully prepared to confront the darkness in life. "Marriage Blister", for instance, paints a particularly bleak picture of love gone sour, and "You Can't Uneat The Apple" is truly touching in it's dignified acceptance of romantic rejection.
This is a Valentine's Day Party, so of course it's not all introspection and angst. "Suited and Booted" is a stirring, strutting thing, and the traditional closing full tilt race through "12 Reasons Why I Love Her" is as much of a hearty communal celebration as ever. Still, the lingering impression is that My Life Story have grown up a little, and while it's worry to have to say that about a pop group, in this case it's no bad thing. Melancholy and Maturity suit My Life Story.

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