One of the most successful and talented British bands of the mid-90s Britpop era. Enamored with angular post-punk music and blessed with a seductive wit, Elastica stood apart from their all-male, ’60s worshipping peers. Their catchy singles and acclaimed debut album placed them at the forefront of Britpop along with Blur, Suede and Oasis, and they were the first of the bunch to find significant success in America. Drug addiction and line-up changes derailed and delayed the band’s unheralded follow-up effort, and the band broke up shortly afterward in 2001.
Details
- Years Active: 1992-2001
- Peak Success: 1993-1996
- Origin: London, England, United Kingdom
- Styles/Movements: Britpop, Post-Punk/New Wave Revival
- Labels:
- Deceptive [1993-2000; UK]
- Geffen [1994-1997; US]
- Atlantic [2000; US]
- Wichita [2001; UK]
- Core Members:
- Justine Frischmann (vocals/guitar)
- Justin Welch (drums)
- Donna Matthews (guitar/vocals) [1992-98]
- Annie Holland (bass) [1992-95, 1999-01]
- David Bush (keyboards) [1996-01]
- Paul Jones (guitar) [1998-01]
- Sharon Mew (keyboards/vocals) [1999-01]
- Spotify monthly listeners: 390,960 (as of Feb 13, 2022)
- Links: Youtube | Spotify | Wikipedia | Allmusic
Playlist
Videos
History
Origins and Suede
Justine Frischmann was born in 1968, her father a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor and her mother the daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants. Frischmann’s father had worked his way up to being named a partner of an engineering firm and the family became comfortably well-off, living in a custom-built house in Twickenham. Her preference for studying art overruled, Frischmann enrolled in the Architecture program at University College, London in 1988, where she met a new enrollee in the Town Planning program, Brett Anderson. The two soon started dating, spending their time taking ecstasy and listening to music with Anderson’s childhood friend, Mat Osman. The trio began covering songs in their apartment, with Anderson and Frischmann on guitar and Osman on bass. However, as they became more serious about the idea of being a band, both Anderson and Frischmann conceded neither was technically proficient enough to be a lead guitarist. After posting an ad in NME, the band added Bernard Butler to the line-up and soon settled on the name Suede.
Frischmann worked to get the band gigs and dropped off demos at local record labels to little notice. Having been using a drum machine previously, the band attempted to recruit a permanent drummer. Justin Welch joined the band for six weeks before jumping ship to another outfit, after which they eventually recruited Simon Gilbert to complete the five piece. Despite the growing songwriting partnership between Anderson/Butler, the band was still having no luck in catching on and Frischmann was having doubts about their future. In an interview with John Harris, she explained: “I had a really horrible moment, just thinking, ‘This just isn’t going to happen.’ Nothing was happening with the band. It was becoming increasingly obvious that we were both going to fail third year at college, because we weren’t very interested. And I remember Brett saying, ‘It’ll be really great when we’ve finished here, and you get a job at an architects’, and I stay at home and do the hoovering and make dinner for you when you get home.’ I had this vision of me working and Brett being at home with a pinny on, cooking vegetarian pizza—and I just thought, ‘I can’t let this happen. This isn’t working.’ If you could put the end of a relationship down to one comment, that was it.”
The singer of another London band had been pestering Frischmann to go on a date and in February 1991, she finally said yes. Damon Albarn’s band, Blur, were on the verge of the popular breakthrough that continued to elude Suede. “There’s No Other Way” peaked in the UK Top 10 in May 1991 and soon began to chart in the US as well. Anderson was still living at Frischmann’s apartment at the time, but he soon moved out and channeled his jealousy and heartbreak into Suede’s music. After a few months of awkwardness, Frischmann quit Suede by the early summer.
After finishing her degree in 1992, Frischmann turned her attention to starting a new band, one that rejected Suede’s grandiosity for more angular, punk-inspired guitar rock. She began jamming with Justin Welch, the former Suede drummer, in the summer of 1992. Albarn temporarily played bass for a few weeks until Annie Holland was found. In September, an all-female front line was cemented with the addition of Donna Matthews, a twenty-year-old guitarist from Wales.
Early Singles
The foursome toyed with several names for their new outfit, including Onk, Dad, Kirby Grip, and Spastics Society. John Harris speculated that the name Elastica was chosen after a term Frischmann’s engineer father would have been familiar with. “The Elastica Principle refers to the tendency of structures, when forced out of their initial shape, to move through a period of distortion before assuming a new form.”
By the summer of 1993, the newly named group began cautiously performing live shows. Over the previous twelve months, Suede had exploded in popularity and the British music press was voraciously hyping new UK bands to be the next big thing. Frischmann smartly kept the band from getting caught up in the media gristmill, booking them gigs outside London. Even still the band’s following grew and when they finally played at the Falcon in Camden in June, fans were lined up outside to see them.
In September, the band recorded five of their songs live for John Peel’s show on BBC Radio One. “Spastica” captured the energetic nature of the band’s performances at this early stage. Newly installed Radio One DJ, Steve Lamacq, formerly of NME, had also founded a new record label, Deceptive, and signed the band. In November, Elastica released their first single, “Stutter,” exclusively on 7″ vinyl. Although limited to a pressing of only 5,000 copies, the song still managed to climb to #80 on the UK charts. A simple one-take miming-along music video was made to support the release.
Source: Discogs
| Song | Release Date | UK Singles | UK # of Weeks on Chart | Spotify Listens* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spastica [live] | – | – | 0 | 16,712 |
| Stutter | November 1, 1993 | 80 | 1 | 2,837,795 |
“Stutter” was unlike anything else in an era of anguished Grunge bands and Suede’s gothic glam rock. Frischmann’s lyrics were both slyly witty and refreshingly bold (“Is there something you lack / when I’m flat on my back”). The singer cheekily cultivated an alluring persona. While sitting for Elastica’s first major interview with the NME, Frischmann delivered one of her most memorable quips: “I can’t think of anything better than sixteen-year-old boys wanking and looking at a poster of me.”
“Line Up” was released as the band’s second single in January 1994. The single’s larger pressing and the band’s growing popularity contributed to it debuting at #20 in the UK, earning them their first spot on Top of the Pops. At the time of their TOTP taping, Frischmann was living in real estate her family owned, but her bandmates were still scraping by, with Matthews and Welch squatting in an abandoned building. The future was bright for the group, though. Despite having only released two singles and no album, Elastica took home the Best New Group award at NME‘s Brat Awards in February.
Source: Discogs
| Song | Release Date | UK Singles | UK # of Weeks on Chart | Spotify Listens* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Line Up | January 31, 1994 | 20 | 4 | 1,831,514 |
Over the course of 1994, the British popular music landscape changed dramatically. Still in the thralls of Grunge the previous year, Elastica’s Top 20 debut would be followed by Suede scoring their second Top 10 single (“Stay Together”) in February, Blur returning to the Top 10 with “Girls and Boys” in March, and Pulp and Oasis both making their Top 20 debuts with “Babies” in June and “Shakermaker” in July, respectively. Blur’s album Parklife became a multi-platinum sensation, cementing the Britpop era that had been launched by Suede. None of these bands were crossing over to America in any significant way, however.
Elastica’s financial situation would soon change. Although still signed with the indie label Deceptive in the UK, Elastica inked a deal with Geffen for distribution in the US. In June, the band played John Peel’s show for a second time, recording a new song “Hold Me Now.” Two months later, they made their Reading festival debut.
| Song | Spotify Listens* |
|---|---|
| Hold Me Now [live] | 9,870 |
Elastica’s third commercial single, “Connection,” was released in October. Peaking at #17 in the UK, it was the band’s second consecutive Top 20 single. Frischmann was also keeping the band in the public eye via her celebrity relationship with Damon Albarn. Trouble was brewing behind the scenes, however. Matthews, Welch and Holland had become heavy drug users by this point, and Matthews and Welch’s relationship had hit the rocks. The two came to blows after a show in Glasgow in October and had to cover up their bruises when playing “Connection” on Top of the Pops the following day.
Source: Discogs
| Song | Release Date | UK Singles | UK # of Weeks on Charts | Spotify Listens* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Connection | October 10, 1994 | 17 | 5 | 20,787,875 |
Elastica and touring the USA
Over a year removed from their debut single, Elastica had still yet to release an LP. One final UK single, “Waking Up,” dropped in February 1995 and peaked at #13, the band’s highest charting of their career. They played their latest hit on Top of the Pops twice, once before its release, and again after it landed on the charts, this time with the support of a disguised Damon Albarn on keyboards.
Three of these early singles would become the subject of lawsuits by bands who Elastica cited as influences of theirs. British post-punk band Wire took issue with “Line Up” and “Connection” sounding too similar to some of their songs. Another British punk band, The Stranglers, made the same claim about “Waking Up.” Out-of-court settlements were reached with both bands.
Source: Discogs
| Song | Release Date | UK Singles | UK # of Weeks on Chart | Spotify Listens* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Waking Up | February 2, 1995 | 13 | 5 | 4,912,802 |
The following month, the band’s self-titled debut album finally arrived. Debuting at #1 and going Gold upon release, Elastica supplanted Oasis’s Definitely Maybe as the UK’s fastest selling debut album of all time (Oasis had recently taken that honor away from Suede’s self-titled debut). Elastica also managed to top the charts without any Top 10 singles, a rarity for the Britpop era. The album was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and would make several year-end best lists, including Rolling Stone and Spin. Album track “2:1” was featured the following year in the movie, Trainspotting, and on its multi-platinum soundtrack.
Source: Discogs
| Album | Release Date | UK Albums | UK # of Weeks on Chart | UK Sales | US Albums | US Sales | Producer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elastica | March 13, 1995 | 1 | 28 | Gold | 66 | Gold | Marc Waterman, Elastica |
| Song | Spotify Listens* |
|---|---|
| 2:1 | 2,035,306 |
Sensing the possibility of international success, Elastica spent most of 1995 touring the world. They made their first visit to the US from February to March in the lead-up to their album release, before spending March through May touring the UK and Europe. At the end of May, they were back in North America for another month. The band returned to the UK at the end of June to headline the second stage at the Glastonbury festival. Then they were off to Japan for a handful of shows before coming back to the US for the Lollapalooza tour, which ran from late July to mid-August. A final US tour spanned from October to November, followed by a few December dates in Europe, and then a tour of Australia in January and February 1996.
Elastica’s music began to catch on in the US in a way that none of the other Britpop bands could match. “Connection” steadily climbed the charts in the spring, capturing the #2 spot on the Alternative charts on May 6th and peaking on the Hot 100 and Radio Songs charts later in May. “Stutter” was re-released by Geffen (along with a new music video) and followed a similar trajectory, cracking the Alternative Top 10 and landing on the Hot 100 and Radio Songs charts in August. “Car Song” was released as a US-only single towards the end of the year, peaking at #33 on the Alternative charts in late December. That same month, Elastica reached Gold status in the US with 500,000 copies sold.
| Song | Release Date | US Singles | US Radio | US Alternative | US Rock | Spotify Listens* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Connection | – | 53 | 42 | 2 | 40 | 20,787,875 |
| Stutter | – | 67 | 57 | 10 | – | 2,837,795 |
| Car Song | November 1995 | – | – | 33 | – | 1,329,081 |
Inactivity and line-up changes
Elastica’s grueling touring schedule, while perhaps critical to their overseas success, would ultimately lead to the band’s demise. In the middle of the Lollapalooza tour in 1995, Elastica popped back to the UK to play the T in the Park festival on August 5th. Afterwards, Annie Holland refused to head back to the US to resume the Lolla tour and instead chose to quit the band. Fatigue and injury were cited as the reasons for Holland’s departure at the time, but Matthews later attested to it really being about drug addiction. While on tour, neither Holland, Matthews nor Welch could reliably score heroin and it was taking a toll on all three of them. They began to resent Frischmann, the only one not addicted to the drug, for making them tour. Holland was replaced by Abby Travis for the remainder of the tour and the three original members limped through the remaining shows before returning home utterly exhausted in February 1996.
They returned to a British music scene that had again changed dramatically. Frischmann recalled her feelings in a 2002 interview with The Observer: “In a musical sense, it seemed like all the good intentions had gone awry, very quickly. I mean, we got back from America and Blur had made The Great Escape, which I thought was a really, truly awful album – so cheesy, like a parody of Parklife, but without the balls or the intellect. And Oasis were enormous and I always found them incredibly dreary. There was this uncritical reverence surrounding the whole thing… it had seemed to me that maybe I was part of some force that was going to make music edgier and more interesting and then suddenly Blur were playing Wembley stadium and it was gone. And it was nothing to do with me again. While you feel that what you do has meaning, it’s easy to put up with the inconveniences of fame, but as soon as you feel that hasn’t, it’s a lot harder to make those sacrifices. I think we all felt isolated and under pressure.”
A month after returning home, the band repopulated their ranks by adding Sheila Chipperfield as Holland’s replacement on bass. Frischmann and Matthews were also attracted to the idea of fusing electronics into their sound, and Dave Bush (formerly of the post-punk band The Fall) was added to the line-up on keyboards. The new five-piece played a few new songs on BBC Radio One’s Evening Session in July, including the Frischmann-penned “I Want You.” After a few UK concerts that summer, the band was supposed to get to work on their next album.
| Song | Spotify Listens* |
|---|---|
| I Want You [live] | 8,726 |
Instead, drug addiction consumed them. Bush and Chipperfield stayed clean, but Matthews and Welch’s heroin habit continued to escalate. Struggling to cope with unrelenting media attention and the pressure of the band’s next steps, Frischmann also began using. The band blew through £350,000 worth of recording sessions and recreational expenses over the next two years. When they were functional enough to record, the results were unimpressive. Welch had difficulty keeping time with the programmed electronics. Matthews became embarrassed by their old material and was pushing to transform the band’s sound. Frischmann stopped showing up for a couple months. Instead she reconnected with someone she hadn’t seen in years: her former boyfriend, Brett Anderson. She even joined Suede on stage at the 1997 Reading Festival to perform a short song written while she was still a member. Elastica didn’t perform any live shows or release any new material that entire year.
Early in 1998, Frischmann and Damon Albarn went on a vacation to Bali to try to save their relationship. The two had been mostly long-distance since 1995, only seeing each other at the rare times they were both not touring. Having finally achieved success in America with “Song 2” in 1997, Albarn was feeling triumphant and encouraged Frischmann to think about putting her career aside to start a family. Instead, she made a bold move to try to jumpstart Elastica’s productivity: inviting Annie Holland back into the fold. Chipperfield was sacked, having played only a handful of gigs in 1996 and two years worth of recording sessions that would never be aired. Matthews continued to fight with Frischmann about the band’s direction, telling the leader “I don’t like your voice, your lyrics make me cringe, and the way you play the guitar makes me cringe.” Frischmann soon had had enough and Matthews was fired in August. That same weekend, she also broke up with Albarn.
The Menace
The break with the past did help propel Elastica forward. Two new members were recruited: guitarist Paul Jones replaced Matthews in late 1998 and a few months later Sharon Mew was added for backing vocals and additional keyboards. In August 1999, the band released its first new music in four years. Elastica 6 Track EP included a range of songs recorded since their last LP, including two songs written by Matthews. “How He Wrote Elastica Man” was co-written and featured backing vocals by Bush’s former The Fall bandmate, Mark E. Smith. Geffen had dropped the band at some point during the inactive years so the EP was only released by Deceptive in the UK.
Source: Discogs
The new Elastica line-up headlined the second stage at the Reading Festival days later. The following month, they recorded a few new songs live on John Peel’s show, including “Generator.”
| Album | Release Date | Producer |
|---|---|---|
| Elastica 6 Track EP | August 23, 1999 | Bruce Lampcov, Alan Moulder |
| Song | Spotify Listens* |
|---|---|
| How He Wrote Elastica Man | 181,196 |
| Generator [live] | 6,318 |
When this new line-up went into the studio to record, they worked quickly and efficiently, finishing their work in just two weeks. The long-awaited follow-up to Elastica’s chat-topping debut finally arrived in April 2000, but their momentum had long since evaporated. The Menace peaked at #24 in the UK and only spent two weeks on the charts. Atlantic Records released the LP in the US but it failed to chart. The only single released from the album, “Mad Dog God Damn,” arrived in June and also charted only modestly. The cover art of both the single and the album featured photographs by Frischmann’s new roommate, Maya Arulpragasam—later to become a successful musician under the name, M.I.A.
Source: Discogs
Source: Discogs
| Album | Release Date | UK Albums | UK # of Weeks on Chart | Producer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Menace | April 3, 2000 | 24 | 2 | Marc Waterman, Elastica, Alan Moulder, Bruce Lampcov |
| Song | Release Date | UK Singles | UK # of Weeks on Chart | Spotify Listens* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mad Dog God Damn | June 12, 2000 | 44 | 2 | 172,208 |
After a drama-free tour of the UK, Europe and the US in 2000, Elastica called it quits over Christmas but didn’t announce the news until later in 2001. Right after releasing the compilation of their live BCC recordings, The Radio One Sessions, the band released a farewell single, “The Bitch Won’t Work,” and faded away.
| Album | Release Date | UK Albums | UK # of Weeks on Chart |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Radio One Sessions | October 29, 2001 | – | 0 |
Postlude
Following the split, Justine Frischmann helped her roommate M.I.A. record demos for her first album, including the single “Galang.” She later married and moved to the US with her husband where she refocused her energies on painting.
Donna Matthews succeeded at getting clean after being dumped from the band. She became a Christian missionary working with the homeless in Britain. Justin Welch and Sharon Mew married and started a family, as well as playing in a band with Annie Holland.
In 2017, the original foursome reunited to remaster and re-release their now classic debut album. Holland, Matthews and Welch tweeted out a photo of the three of them enjoying each other’s company—and in the comments assured fans that Frischmann was involved in the work too. But unlike their Britpop peers Blur and Pulp who’ve reunited and toured again, Elastica are finally content with where they’re at.
Timelines
Click on a chart to enlarge the images
Members
Albums
Singles
Sources
John Harris, Britpop! Cool Britannia and the Spectacular Demise of English Rock (Da Capo Press, 2004).
https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2002/mar/10/life1.lifemagazine4
https://www.stereogum.com/1921035/elastica-reunite-in-the-studio/news/
https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/the-full-story-of-elasticas-1995-self-titled-debut-album-10347