As every self-respecting hipster knows, the correct answer to the question “Blur or Oasis?” is, of course, “Pulp.” Yet for a time there in 1997, a lot of us were answering “Mansun.”

On the back of stellar singles “Stripper Vicar” and “Wide Open Space,” Mansun’s debut album Attack of the Grey Lantern actually pipped Blur’s self-titled album to the number one spot upon its release. It came at just the right time. Britpop was only just on the wane before Be Here Now read it its last rites and Mansun’s tunes were so catchy that most could overlook the fact that Attack was a convoluted rock opera involving guitarist Dominic Chad (possibly the narrator’s gay lover), a superhero called The Grey Lantern, a vicar who moonlights as a stripper, and his daughter Mavis. Eighteen months later, the whole enterprise would have seemed ridiculous.

And it did. The group’s “difficult second album,” Six, made it as far as (amusingly enough) number six, before the record-buying public woke up and realised that it was a convoluted rock opera involving a Tom Baker spoken-word piece.

As an impressionable youngster, I read the negative press response to Six and decided not to bother. I had my copy of Grey Lantern and that was enough to keep me satisfied for a while. During that period, I tried in vain to interest my friends in Mansun, but the moment words come out of your mouth like “rock opera,” “concept album,” and “stripper vicar,” people tend to look at you strangely.

When I finally heard Six, around a year after its release, I discovered something not too dissimilar to Grey Lantern. Over the course of a few listens, my assessment moved from “surprisingly good” to “mind-blowingly brilliant.” From the changing-genres-midstream histrionics of the title track to the Godspell stylings of “Shotgun” to the piano-balladry of “Inverse Midas,” there was truly something for everyone.

It was definitely a step up on the pretentiousness scale from Grey Lantern, but the critical appraisal had more to do with timing than objectivity. Six arrived when reviewers and fans alike had exhausted their gushing praise on a little album called OK Computer. They were too busy hiding their Yes and King Crimson albums to again risk being accused of liking prog rock.

And prog it definitely is. Paul Draper, Dominic Chad, Stove King and Andy Rathbone had little time for the supposed authenticity of three-chord-toting garage bands. Music for Mansun was about art and taking the listener to new and strange places. Hence the corrupted “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” sample in “Out” and the extended emotional and musical breakdown in “Cancer.”

Yet Six puts the lie to the common critical belief that honesty requires realistic, confessional lyrics and a musical accompaniment of either bare-assed rock or rustic folkiness. Believe it when I say that this album is an emotional statement, despite its extended guitar solos and classical affectations.

In the midst of all the lyrical gobbledegook about Winnie the Pooh, Mormonism, and Stanley Kubrick, there’s an emotional centre of paranoia and late-century anxiety. Draper wants to bare his soul, but can only do it behind a wall of cryptic babbling and logic-defying musical experimentation. It’s confessional music for the agoraphobic.

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