Suburban Rock 'n' Roll

After touring and promotional commitments of their second album Tin Planet concluded in late 1998, Space returned to the studio to commence work on their third album, tentatively titled Love You More than Football. However, Gut Records objected to Edwyn Collins being chosen as producer, and forced the band to rework the material several times, delaying its release for over two years. A taster single from the album, "Diary of a Wimp", was released, but was poorly received by critics and peaked outside the top 40, the band's first single to do so since "Neighbourhood".

The long hiatus between albums and lack of substantial material began affecting the band's ability to play live, as former guitarist/vocalist Jamie Murphy recalls: "When it was 3rd album time, I think we’d been away from it all for about a year and we had a tour while we had nothing out. We were doing 2000 capacity venues and there’d only be 400 people there. So we were going onstage every night going, “What the fuck’s going on here? What have we done wrong?”.[4]

Eventually, the album were scrapped in July 2001. By that time, the band had terminated their contract with Gut, which according to frontman Tommy Scott, was due to creative differences rather than financial issues: "It took us a year to get out of it. One of the problems we had in the past was that we felt we were being pushed in the wrong direction - like they were trying to turn us into The Beautiful South or something, when in fact we never wanted that at all, we just wanted to be a cult band".[5] Meanwhile, Jamie Murphy, who was growing estranged from the others, was dismissed from the line-up. According to Murphy, because tensions were running high at the time, the exchange was never made face-to-face between his bandmates, and was informed only by the management that he was out of the group.[6] Love You More than Football now primarily exists as a bootleg, courtesy of a promotional CD-R which circulated around May 2000.

As a result, Space, now reduced to a four-piece and out of a record label, retreated to the studio for a couple of years, sporadically releasing several songs as MP3s free of charge to download through their website, becoming one of the first major groups to do so. These tracks showcased a more experimental side to the band, and were eventually collated as the Music for Aliens EP.

Suburban Rock 'N' Roll was released in March 2004. The band had initially proposed for it to be released through producer Stephen Lironi's label Mutant, who had already released the album's lead single "Zombies" in November 2002 almost 18 months earlier. However, the label began to experience financial problems, so at the end of 2003, the band eventually signed a deal with RandM Records, a label formed by veteran music industry executives Mike Andrews and Roy Eldridge from within the Chrysalis Group.

The band also ran into problems having the album artwork approved. The original sleeve was intended to depict a suburban household from the point of view of a sniper's target, but the band had lost the rights to use the original photograph. Instead, a series of collages designed by Tommy Scott was used as the artwork for the album and its accompanying singles. The eyes on the cover are lifted from a promotional photo of actor Conrad Veidt from the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which Scott has referred to as his favourite film.[13]

Three singles were issued from Suburban Rock 'n' Roll: "Zombies", "Suburban Rock 'n' Roll" and "20 Million Miles from Earth". "Suburban Rock 'n' Roll" was the only single that managed to chart, peaking at a lukewarm #67 in the UK, and the only one to receive an official music video, although an animated clip for "20 Million Miles from Earth" was released on the band's website. The album itself failed to chart altogether, and was met with a mixed reception from the press.

At the time of the album's release, Space had already set to work on a follow-up entitled Flies, and had premiered several of its songs at gigs in 2004. However, after the band decided to call it a day in 2005, the album never materialised, though a provisional tracklisting appeared on their website.[14]

Space:

• Tommy Scott – lead vocals, guitar
• Franny Griffiths – keyboards, electronics, backing vocals
• Dave "Yorkie" Palmer – bass guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
• Leon Caffrey – drums

Additional Musicians:

• Stephen Lironi – additional guitar, keyboards
• Ged Lynch – percussion

Production:

• Stephen Lironi – producer
• Doug Trantow – engineering & mixing
• Jack Jelfs – assistance
• Alan Yoshida – mastering
• Mark Cowley @ HUG Management – management
• Tommy Scott – original artwork
• Dave "Yorkie" Palmer – layout & design
• Roy Elridge & Mike Andrews @ RandM – record label

• "Suburban Rock 'N' Roll" on SpaceTheBand.com