The Cribs - Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever (LP) - Purple Vinyl

By the time the Jarman brothers hit their third record, they’d sharpened their scrappy Wakefield charm into something that could actually rattle the radio. Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever arrived in May 2007 on Wichita in the UK, and it still feels like a perfect snapshot of the moment when The Cribs tightened the screws without sanding off the splinters. Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand produced it, and you can hear his taste for taut rhythms and neat little stabs of guitar, but the heart is still very much the brothers Gary, Ryan and Ross, trading yelps and hooks like it’s last call in a sticky-floored venue.

It opens with Our Bovine Public, all serrated guitars and eye-rolling at small-town nonsense, the sort of blast that reminds you why indie clubs used to go spare for this band. Then the big one hits. Men’s Needs is a proper anthem, one of those choruses that can level a room without feeling cheap. The song’s video, directed by Diane Martel, got trimmed for TV for obvious reasons, but the controversy never overshadowed the tune. It’s wiry, a little snide, totally irresistible. Moving Pictures brings a bittersweet shimmer, while I’m a Realist snaps and sprints like a caffeine rush. The tempos are brisk, the choruses keep coming, and Ross’s drumming cleaves everything together with a no-fuss snap that always suited these lads better than gloss.

The masterstroke is Be Safe. You don’t expect a spoken-word monologue from Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth to be the emotional high point of a Cribs record, yet it lands like a gut punch. Over a steady build, Ranaldo talks about fear and resolve, the band pushing behind him until the whole thing blooms. It became a fan favourite for good reason, and if you’ve seen them roll out the video of Ranaldo’s face onstage while the Jarmans go for broke, you know how well it still works. It gives the album a spine, a reflective pivot that throws the fizzier tracks into sharper relief.

Kapranos’s production doesn’t tidy The Cribs so much as focus them. Guitars grind without turning to mush, bass lines pop, and those ragged gang vocals feel close enough to touch. Lyrically it’s messy relationships, self-sabotage and the petty cruelties we pretend to shrug off, delivered with that unmistakable Yorkshire bite. Plenty of bands from that era chased bigger choruses and lost their bite. This one keeps its teeth.

Reception at the time matched the step up in craft. The British music press rallied around it, with outlets like NME and The Guardian praising the band’s leap from cult heroes to festival-bothering contenders. In the US, a Warner Bros release helped it travel further, but it never sounds like a compromise. It sounds like three brothers who know exactly what they’re good at, prodding their own formula in just the right places. If you’d been following them since The New Fellas, this felt like the pay-off. If you came in cold through Men’s Needs on the radio, it still holds as a gateway to a catalog that’s more stubborn and more heartfelt than the fashion-cycle bands they outlasted.

On vinyl the record really breathes. The top-end bite of Our Bovine Public, the low-end tug under Moving Pictures, and the hushed room tone at the start of Be Safe all feel more present. Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever vinyl isn’t just a nostalgic purchase, it’s the best way to catch the detail in those interlocking guitars. If you’re crate digging for The Cribs vinyl, this is the one that won the band new diehards while keeping the old ones happy. And if you prefer to buy The Cribs records online, you’ll find plenty of copies floating around alongside other The Cribs albums on vinyl that make a solid little run from the debut through the late 2000s. For folks browsing vinyl records Australia wide, it’s the kind of title you’ll still see staff champion at a good Melbourne record store, because it turns a casual customer into a convert in one side.

All these years later, the thrill hasn’t dimmed. The riffs still barge in, the choruses still crack a grin out of you, and Be Safe still hits that quiet nerve when you least expect it. Not many 2007 indie records have aged this well. This one plays like a band right on time with itself, and that never goes out of style.