Marchin' Already

Product Information

One of the few acts that genuinely deserved their moment in the Britpop sunshine was Ocean Colour Scene, a West Midlands quartet whose previous record label had remixed their debut album without their consent in a cynical attempt to jump on the baggy bandwagon of the early 90s.

Fresh off the heels of announcing their first album in 15 years, Happiness Bastards, legendary rock band The Black Crowes today announced their 2024 headline tour – set to hit 35 cities in North America and Europe this Spring in support of their forthcoming studio album. Having been burnt badly by the experience, half of OCS eventually looked up and found themselves backing Paul Weller, while the band as a whole circulated a newly recorded demo-tape. There is also a three disc/one DVD super deluxe version with added demos and radio sessions on Disc 2 and a live concert from the Marchin' Already tour from the Manchester Apollo on 22 February 1998, with the original released VHS of their concert from Stirling Castle making up the DVD release. Marchin’ Already is OCS’s only album to hit the top of the charts, displacing the charmless bloated mess that was Oasis’s Be Here Now as it did so. Opening with “100 Mile High City”, a guitar-tactic high water mark in the band’s career, it’s an album which kicks off with no little vim and vigour and the first three tracks raise the expectation that it may eclipse its predecessor.For the Marchin’ Already box (which will also be issued as a two-CD deluxe), the original album takes up the first disc and is joined by a second CD of B-sides, radio sessions and previously unreleased demos.

Where it hits its highs, OCS prove themselves to be a great guitar-orientated rock band with a well honed soulful edge, however there’s also a fair bit of the album that sounds like retro-rock by numbers. Granted, the quartet’s innate talent pretty much carries them through the album’s less interesting songs, and the fact that they displayed significantly less opinion-splitting arrogance than either of the Gallagher brothers ensures that even their lesser numbers never explore the teeth-grindingly awful depths that the very worst Britpop frequently sunk to.

The album knocked Oasis' Be Here Now off the top spot in the UK Albums Chart— Noel Gallagher sent Ocean Colour Scene his congratulations through a plaque on which he had inscribed, "To The Second Best Band In Britain". The songs were taken from the band's catalogue that they had built up since forming several years earlier. It’s a great way to sign off a mixed bag of an album that inspires wows and indifference in equal measures. Marchin’ Already is just one of those albums where the singles released from it overshadowed the vast majority of the album, with only the instrumental “All Up”, “Foxy’s Folk Faced” and the aforementioned “It’s a Beautiful Thing” avoiding that fate.

One of these tapes ended up in the hands of a Mr N Gallagher, whose opinions were at the time held in such esteem that the once washed up Ocean Colour Scene found themselves re-signed and heading in the studio to record what would ultimately result in Moseley Shoals, one of the biggest selling albums of 1996, and one which found them rubbing shoulders with both the worthy, and unworthy, Britpop elite. A more subdued version of "Traveller's Tune" originally appeared as a B-side to "The Day We Caught the Train". A further audio disc offers up a hour of live performance capturing the band’s gig at the Manchester Apollo on 22 February 1998 and a DVD – Travellers Tunes: Live at Stirling Castle (originally a VHS release in ’98) – completes the set. History suggests that they were always destined to dwell in the twin shadows of Paul Weller (pretty much Britpop’s only solo act) and the omnipresent Oasis, however at this point in the 90s, with Weller enduring something of a temporary lull in form and Oasis’ being exposed as the musical snake oil salesmen they had always been, OCS were able to outshine both.The Ocean Colour Scene debut will be issued as a two-CD deluxe edition with a bonus disc which gathers up early singles and B-sides in addition to a couple of outtakes. Steve Cradock famously retorted "it's an honour to be described as Britain's second best band, ahead of Oasis but behind the Beatles".