Hosts: Neil & Chris

Neil's still got the yellowing CD from 1996 in the footwell of various cars, and now he's diving deep into Skunk Anansie's Stoosh with the kind of reverence usually reserved for altar boys. This is the album that landed bang in the middle of Britpop but refused to play by anyone's rules. Skin's voice, a melting pot of influences from reggae to rage, meeting Ace's effects-laden guitar wizardry and a rhythm section that borrowed heavily from the Rage Against the Machine playbook. The result sold a million copies, confused Meta's algorithms decades later, and proved you could be political without being preachy.

Chris confesses he came late to the Skunk party, too busy with his Britpop bubble to notice what was happening on the alt side of 1996. But listening now, with the benefit of distance and decent headphones, he's hearing the bass lines buried in those thick 90s mixes and discovering why this band demanded respect from everyone who saw them live. From Great Linford Manor to Glastonbury headlining status, this is the story of four people with completely different influences creating something genuinely fresh.

Hedonism opens with those harmonic plinks that every college guitarist was learning alongside Nothing Else Matters, a song about first heartbreak and the realization that just because someone feels good doesn't make their behavior right. Picking on Me clocks in at a ferocious two minutes sixteen seconds of pure rage. Yes I'm F***ing Political closes the discussion with exactly the confrontation the title promises. Throughout, Ace's guitar work stands apart from the chordy Britpop contemporaries, all riff-driven architecture with delays and modulation creating delicate textures inside massive sounds. The rhythm section grooves with Parliament Funkadelic swagger, and Skin's voice, that inimitable instrument, moves from whisper to roar with complete control.

Stoosh arrived when the music press wanted neat categories and Skunk Anansie refused to fit. They were too political for the party crowd, too Black British for the Britpop boys' club, too skilled for anyone to dismiss them as noise. Skin's eloquence in interviews, her journey from Brixton under Thatcher to commanding festival stages, and the band's mutual love and respect created something that still sounds vital today. The album appeared on Rock Hard's 500 greatest rock and metal albums and Pop Matters' overlooked and underrated list, precisely because it defied easy classification. In 2025, as their new single Artist suggests more music's coming, Stoosh reminds us that great art comes from collision, from melting pots, from refusing to play it safe.

Perfect for: Anyone who ever felt the hairs stand up on their neck hearing a perfect vocal performance through great headphones, musicians studying how different influences strengthen rather than dilute a band's sound, 90s survivors who remember where they were when they first heard Hedonism, and anyone who believes music should say something that matters while making you move.