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I am a very lucky and excited boy today, because my mate Bradford a.k.a. 'The Priest' has laced me with a copy of the new Chicks On Speed album, 99 cents (I don't have that soding symbol on my keyboard).
It is ace. Obvious highlights:
a) 'We Don't Play Guitars' - let me repeat myself: This is an instant classic, 100% anthem... This is the bastard daughter of ‘Walk This Way’ and ‘LT Tour Theme’. This is intelligence and stupidity, this is deadly serious comedy, this is a treatise on cultural attitudes to gender, technology and the myth of ‘musicianship’ in rock… This is a manifesto you can dance to (yes, again).
b) You know those hip-hop tracks - usually remixes - where you get a ridiculously long list of guest rappers doing verse? Well, Chicks On Speed do a version of 'Wordy Rappinghood' featuring all their friends: Le Tigre, Miss Kittin, Kevin Blechdom, Adult... It's like a testament to the beauty of the human voice (mostly spoken, mostly or entirely female, I'm not sure).
The two things that really leap out at me as discussion points would be:
a) the production. 'Coventry' is basically a tweaked r&b ballad in the same vein as TLC's 'Unpretty' (hang on, is that ACTUALLY a TLC song they're sampling and glitching up at the start?). 'Sell-Out' - I dunno, this is as the historians say "not my period" but is that crisp sound reminiscent of Soul 2 Soul?
b) the politics. The title track and 'Sell-Out' seem to do for capitalism what 'Fashion Rules' (another stand-out) does for fashion: C.O.S. are down with DIY politics, but they're lured by the shiny things - "I'm not crazy about money but I like what it can do" - they are aware of their own complicity and perhaps of the necessity, nay inevitability of compromise. Maybe. I don't know. It's hard to tell which way the sarcasm cuts in a variety of accents. Worth further consideration.
And worthe every penny/cent/deutschmark.
And I LOVE the cover - bands who have their own aesthetic = a fetish of mine...
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