Clandestine Classic VI - Freeze The Atlantic

The sixth post in an occasional series that is intended to highlight songs that you might not have heard that I think are excellent - clandestine classics, if you will. Maybe they'll be by bands you've never heard of. Maybe they'll be by more familiar artists, but tracks that were squirelled away on b-sides, unpopular albums, radio sessions or music magazine cover-mounted CDs. Time will, undoubtedly, tell.

Today, a single from Derby's favourite sons, Cable. And not only that, a single that was used in an advert! Despite my previous posts rants on this subject (this and this, for starters), the ad status isn't enough to stop this from being a clandestine classic. But I digress. What can I tell you about Cable? Not too much, actually. All I know about them, aside from this record, has been gleaned straight from their Wikipedia entry and the rather excellent fan site, Sub-lingual, both of which you can read for yourselves with no help from me, if you're interested.

But what about the record? Well, Freeze The Atlantic was released in 1997, having been snagged from the album When Animals Attack by the marketing men at Sprite. Yes, this loping, fuzzy-guitar-driven indie groove was used to flog cans of anaemic citrus toss. And, as far as I know, the band let this happen for free, in the hope that the attendant publicity and chart sales would be worth it in terms of long-term success. Really. To their enduring credit, the band were aware enough to acknowledge that this might not work out for them - the B-side of the eventual single release was called The [We Did The Music For The Sprite Ad] Blues. Oh, and they held fire on releasing the single until after the advert had stopped doing the rounds on TV. Not much after, but after nonetheless - this seems pretty classy to me. But there I go, digressing again...

Has the song aged well? You decide. The "soundalike" references always cited for Cable are Sonic Youth and Fugazi but when I hear this I always imagine some kind of Pixies/Beta Band hybrid, and that can only be a good thing, right? As for the rest of their output, I cannot say - this is, and is likely to remain, the only Cable record I will ever own. And you can own it too - you can still pick up a copy of When Animals Attack, whilst the more unscrupulous amongst you may be interesting in this. And if neither of those floats your boat, there's always YouTube...