Emily Mackay, for the Guardian:
You never forget your first big band breakup. Rifling through YouTube for videos with which to decorate this article, I came across a comment: “No band splitting up hurt as much as Kenickie, nowhere near.” I know exactly what steve2727 means.
Since Kenickie first snared me in the mid-90s, they’ve popped up on every mixtape I’ve ever made, had their B-sides smuggled into nearly every DJ set I’ve played. And when I think about the T-shirt I left at the house of a boy I had a horribly unrequited crush on, a little tight knot of loss still grips my guts, and definitely not for the boy.
Most summaries of 90s music tend to focus on Britpop, making those years seem much more limited, male and white than it did if you grew up through it. Though they are seen now as something of a novelty footnote, Kenickie were, for many young, glitter-smeared fans, a necessary band of the era, one who lived out all its promise and its problems. In a cultural housefire, I would let everything Oasis, Blur, Elastica and Suede ever did burn to save Kenickie’s debut album.
Great article. One of the 90s' most underrated bands.
