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Funny thing about the Chameleons―nowhere have I seen their story told beyond a mention (the mention is in John Robb’s The North Will Rise Again, to my mind the definitive Manchester music book), yet in Manchester they’re revered, despite never having infiltrated the Factory Records/Hacienda scene. Truth is, even in Manchester their audience is small, if passionate. But this is not an obscure “experimental” group. Think U2, Cure, the Church, “shoegaze” forerunners with northern soul―the soul of the Roses and Verve and Joy Division. These guys mean it. No, unlike Joy Division, they’re not sophisticated. No mad-hatter producer or Throbbing Gristle obsession for these lads. Not so much urban paranoia either; hailing from Middleton, a small former industrial town five miles north of Manchester, it’s just possible they felt more country/outer-suburban than city, and in their sad, spacious atmospherics there’s a romantic sense of forces massing at the edge of consciousness that pulls at my heart. Is it the land singing, against all odds, through the sheen of eighties production (mostly held in check), through the pop structure that the Chameleons (unlike Joy Division) still are constrained by? The melodies! Every note is rationed, thought-out, placed exactly, as if to waste colour is dangerous, but in the discipline of this limited pallette speaks the heartbreak of singer/bassist/everyman philosopher Mark Burgess, who laments: “It’s an easy thing to sell your skin”, “Every day you’re crucified”,
“You catch your blessings while they’re there”. No blasted, gothic eloquence here. The words are plain, heartfelt. Don’t get me wrong, there’s beauty here―lots of it―but it’s never florid or lavish. To this day, the Chameleons are the sound of Manchester to me. And What Does Anything Mean? Basically is their masterpiece. If Joy Division is the machines or the future singing, this is the blighted, near-beaten resilient earth. In urban gardens, in repurposed industrial spaces, in canals flushed of gunk and made picturesque, maybe, yes, the North Will Rise Again.