The problem with being vehemently anti-Britpop is having to pretend that any albums from that time and place that you do like aren't actually Britpop at all. Elastica's self-titled debut is a case in point - a sharp, savvy album that, whether I like it or not, was tarred with the Britpop brush.
Reviewing the reissue for the Quietus, Claire Biddles perhaps drifts into the realm of hyperbole in describing the record as "untouchable louche perfection", but I agree that it "exudes a sleazy smokers' area glamour: fags and keys on a night out, sitting on pavements in your glad rags, waking up with a hangover and a drawn-on tattoo". It was certainly pleasingly at odds with the cheap jingoism and boorish masculine attitude that came to define the period.
Perhaps its greatest strength, though, was as a gateway drug to even stronger stuff. The fact that 'Connection' stole directly from Wire's 'Three Girl Rhumba' was upheld in court, but did the job of introducing the pioneering punks to a new generation. And it's hard to listen to Kleenex/LiLiPUT (as I have been recently, repeatedly) and not see Elastica as a helpful neon-lit signpost.
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