Classic Album Review: Easy Star All-Stars – Dub Side of The Moon (2003)

I’m usually highly sceptical about projects of this nature. Even just to take a classic album and remix or re-master it provides risk enough on its own, let alone taking one of the biggest-selling albums of all-time and reproducing it in a completely different style. And when the original recording was made by one of rock’s all-time legendary and most critically-acclaimed groups … well, you really are on a hiding to nothing.

However, as much as the dreaded (no pun) words “novelty item” are screaming out at me to be written here, I have to say that Dub Side of The Moon is seriously good stuff, and the Easy Star All-Stars deserve enormous credit for pulling this one off in the stylish manner they did.

Dub Side does exactly what it says on the box – namely, take the 1973 Pink Floyd epic Dark Side of The Moon and record it in a reggae/dub style. The Easy Star All-Stars largely remain faithful to the Pink Floyd original, making minimal alterations to the overall feel of the music, other than the obvious changes to structure. Changes that convert the prog rock of Floyd’s original into the roots reggae found on this. But even then, the spacey atmospheric nature of prog, full of echo and reverb as it is, adapts well to the reggae format, and the All-Stars strike just the right blend of styles on Dub Side. In many respects, this material only serves to confirm how remarkably similar the two genres can be.

That the album is reproduced track for track suggests the All-Stars weren’t prepared to compromise, dilute, or offer up any short cuts along the way - despite any temptation there may have been to omit a few of the more challenging tracks. On ‘Us and Them’, the All-Stars offering actually almost surpasses the quality of Pink Floyd’s version (what? Blasphemy! – Ed), and Frankie Paul’s vocal is one of the album’s most obvious highlights. ‘Brain Damage’ is another quite brilliant interpretation (see clip below), while the “Alt version” especially (one of two) of ‘Time’ adds an earthy melancholic flavour.

The Easy Star All-Stars subsequently produced a similar covers album/version of Radiohead’s late Nineties masterpiece ‘OK Computer’ - titled ‘Radiodread’ (2006) - which was equally as impressive. There’s also been ‘Dubber Side of The Moon’, where the stuff found on Dub Side gets a makeover of its own, via a selection of remixes by the good and the great of the dub world.

Dub Side of The Moon is a worthy tribute to Pink Floyd and their original album. I can scarcely believe 13 years have passed since this slice of stoner heaven was released.

 

Classic Album Review: Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense (1984)

It is David Byrne’s 64^th birthday today. While many would argue that Byrne’s best work came when collaborating with Brian Eno, or when working in a solo guise, for me, he’ll forever be Mr Talking Heads. Here’s a look back at one of that band’s finest moments ...

Stop Making Sense is the soundtrack to the film, and “live concert” footage, of the same name, and it is essentially Talking Heads captured in their most natural habitat; a humbling, unforgiving, instinctive, “live” state. It’s an environment in which they thrive, it should be said, all rhythm and boundless energy, with David Byrne as front man extraordinaire, and an exceptionally well-oiled unit providing the groove.

I’ve never really been a huge fan of the band, after suffering a serious bout of over-exposure thanks to errant FM radio play-listing executives of a particularly mid-Eighties vintage. Not through any great fault of the band itself, then, and revisiting this material some three decades later, without the overkill-factor, has been an enlightening experience.

On Stop Making Sense there’s a lot to like. From the instantly infectious punchy opener ‘Psycho Killer’ – arguably the best example of “acoustic disco” ever – to the languid lazy Stones-drenched gospel-funk of the closer ‘Take Me To The River’, this album gives us a couple of bookends to drool over. In between, we get the best of the rest, a live “greatest hits” package of sorts; the excellent ‘Swamp’, the raw and dysfunctional groove of ‘Slippery People’, the madcap bounce and stomp of ‘Burning Down The House’, and the typically Eighties, frankly very weird, yet still oddly compelling, ‘Girlfriend Is Better’. Then there is ‘Once In A Lifetime’ (“letting the days go by”) … all prototype David Byrne freak-out … pure Heads; a five and a half minute mix of social commentary, prophetic insight, and unabashed sarcasm.

Only Talking Heads sound like this, and Stop Making Sense is a great snapshot of everything the band was about, everything it was best at, all somehow crammed into just 46 and a half minutes here.

Oh, and damn those bloody Eighties radio jocks … it seems they may well have had some taste after all.

Album Review: The Leers - Are You Curious? (2016)

After a couple of EPs and a number of singles since relocating to Auckland from Mount Maunganui five years back, talented four-piece The Leers have come up with something rather special with Are You Curious?, the band’s full-length debut. From the first few bars of the psych-rock opener 'Does This Speak To You?', it’s immediately apparent that these guys mean business; it’s not really a question, it’s more a statement of intent – this is going to be big, bold, and ballsy. Exactly the sort of thing a band needs in order to make the often difficult transition from low key student radio exposure to wider-reaching crossover success. It may have taken a few years to get here, but The Leers’ debut arrives fully formed and full of swagger. A lot of that is surely down to the sumptuous production of Sven Petterson (The Checks) and the work of engineer Ben Lawson, out of the Red Bull Studios, but it’s also down to the simple fact that these are quality tunes. There’s ten of them, plus a mid-album interlude ('Escapades') and a brief finale ('Outro'), each one offering up something slightly different, with the unrepentant pop hooks found on the likes of 'Fool' and 'Easy Love' leaving the biggest impression. Vocalist Matt Bidois carries these songs well. His voice booms at times, yet he’s just as capable of subtle shifts to reveal a more fragile hue when required. The rhythm duo are tight, the guitar playing of James Kippenberger is uncompromising and frequently a stand-out, but perhaps best thing about this album is that it’s completely devoid of any filler whatsoever. On this form, The Leers could turn out to be quite big. Stadium-sized, even.

This review originally appeared in the April/May 2016 edition of NZ Musician magazine: http://www.nzmusician.com/2016/05/11/the-leers-curious/

Album Review: Massive Attack - Ritual Spirit EP (2016)

There’s been five full-length studio albums, five remix albums, while 2016’s Ritual Spirit is, rather symmetrically, EP number five for Massive Attack.

The group has long been considered the leading purveyor of that bastardised genre frequently referred to as “trip hop”. You could say the original Wild Bunch/Massive crew defined the sub-genre with the critically-acclaimed Blue Lines album back in 1991. According to the evidence offered on Ritual Spirit, it’s a path Massive Attack continues to traverse today, and its heady concoction of hip hop, electronica, and funk remains as innovative as ever.

Neneh Cherry, Shara Nelson, Tracey Thorn, and Horace Andy are just a few of the more high profile names to have worked with the group over the past quarter of a century, and that longstanding commitment to musical collaboration continues on Ritual Spirit.

While the core input comes from Wild Bunch originals Robert Del Naja (“3D”) and Grant Marshall (“Daddy G”), there’s a real sense of déjà vu when Tricky (aka Adrian Thaws) returns for the first time in yonks on EP closer ‘Take It There’.

Similarly, Ninja Tune veteran Roots Manuva, arguably the UK’s most consistent or reliable go-to rapper across two full decades, appears on opener ‘Dead Editors’, while relative newcomers Azekel (on the title track) and Young Fathers (on ‘Voodoo In My Blood’) round out the guest co-conspirators this time out.

The latter being a rather unique and rarely spotted thing – a Mercury Prize-winning hip hop trio from Edinburgh.

Thematically and musically, Ritual Spirit is no great departure from what we’ve come to expect – an electro/hip hop vibe which fair drips with paranoia and angst. It’s dark and dense. Creepy and bit chilling. Close and claustrophobic. Yet not to the point of becoming unlistenable or at the expense of any of its natural groove.

It’s a trippy contrast in forms and shapes, and one that might have been better reconciled with a softer vocal presence on occasion. A Shara Nelson or a Horace Andy, say. Just to remove its harshest edge. Or something else to give it the lightness of touch it perhaps otherwise lacks.

Or maybe not. That’s picky. And a bit too nostalgic. The bar’s always been set fairly high for Massive Attack, and the truth is that while Ritual Spirit might not be perfect, by 2016 standards, it stacks up pretty well.

Here’s the title track, featuring Azekel:

 

 

 

Classic Album Review: Michael Jackson – Off The Wall (1979, 2016 Deluxe Edition)

Whatever you made of his dysfunctional personal life and some of his questionable choices, Michael Jackson was a once-in-a-generation pop genius. That part can't really be denied. His musical legacy speaks for itself.

I've written before about how Jackson's death in 2009 placed focus firmly back on his music. It was welcome development, in as much as it's ever possible to find a silver lining where the cloud of tragic early death is concerned. And so, some seven years on, space, distance, and time to reflect has offered us the chance to view things with a little more clarity - sans the daily dose of negativity provided by a predatory tabloid media intent on reporting his every move. What we're left with is a rather incredible body of work.

Thriller is, of course, the album most readily associated with Jackson. It is, after all, the biggest selling album of all-time, and that mid-Eighties period from Thriller's release in 1982 through to the Bad album in 1987 unquestionably represents something of a commercial peak for Michael Jackson. As successful as those landmark albums were, I don't buy the notion that either album found Jackson at his creative best. I'm of the view that 1979's Off The Wall was a superior work, and not just because it's the album which effectively launched his solo career. Or at least phase two, or the adult phase, of his solo career - Jackson having released four "solo" albums between 1972 and 1975 while still a member of the Jackson 5.

Off The Wall was his first release on Epic, and his first with producer Quincy Jones. The label change was significant because all of his previous work had been released under the Motown banner, with that label being notoriously strict in terms of maintaining creative control. The presence of Quincy Jones was a major development too, and the producer would go on to become a genuine confidante and mentor for Jackson over many years. The album also yielded Jackson's first Grammy.

 

But more than any of that, Off The Wall was the album that best captured Jackson at his youthful devil-may-care exuberant best. It felt like a coming-of-age release, a breakout for a young man whose talent and ambition clearly outstripped that of his brothers. This was the album where the boy became a man, a solo artist, and a global superstar in his own right.

It's certainly one of the first albums I can recall that had no obvious filler (within my admittedly very limited album scope at that time - I was practically a child myself when I discovered it). Or to put it another way, one of the first where every track had the potential to be released as a single - and five of the ten tracks did become singles, with opener 'Don't Stop Til You Get Enough' being the jewel in Jackson's metaphorical crown.

Actually, has there ever been a more joyous opening to an album than the fateful first thirty seconds of 'Don't Stop Til You Get Enough'? ... the "force", you know, it really does have a lot of power ... (*your blogger does his best MJ squeal for full effect*).

Feelin' The Force

That track itself stands as perhaps the definitive representation of Jackson's desire to break out and take things to a whole new level - the sense of youthful passion and unbridled freedom barely contained within 'Don't Stop' was something Jackson would struggle to replicate on later work (with arguably, large doses of outright cynicism creeping in over time, particularly in later years - see ‘Scream’ for just one obvious example).

 

Yet for all that Off The Wall was about Jackson breaking free - from the constraints of family and Motown - he got quite a lot of help along the way, with ‘Don’t Stop’ being one of only two Jackson originals on the album - the other being ‘Working Day And Night’. It was heavyweight help too, not just from Quincy Jones, but with song-writing contributions coming from Paul McCartney (‘Girlfriend’), Stevie Wonder (‘I Can’t Help It’), and Carole Bayer Sager (‘It’s The Falling In Love’). Rod Temperton (of chart funkers Heatwave) offered up second single ‘Rock With You’, and album closer ‘Burn This Disco Out’. Ultimately though, Jackson was able to stamp his own mark on each of these tunes, which is a measure of just how good Off The Wall was (and remains).

There’s also something quite special about the purity of Jackson’s voice in 1978/1979 when Off The Wall was recorded, with ‘She’s Out of My Life’ providing one of the more dramatic moments on the album, and certainly a genuine highlight in terms of vocal performance.

2016’s Deluxe edition is something of an oddity among so-called “legacy” releases in that it doesn’t contain any new or additional music. Rather, the standard album, albeit with spruced-up packaging, is accompanied by a DVD containing Spike Lee’s absorbing documentary ‘Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off The Wall’, which covers exactly what it says on the box.

The documentary is really quite specific to that mid-to-late Seventies period of Jackson’s life, so anyone expecting a career-spanning overview will be disappointed. And that’s perfectly fine, because Spike Lee digs very deep, examining the difficult transition from child prodigy to global superstar and all of the many peripheral factors surrounding that. How Jackson went about re-establishing himself as a credible artist in the wake of his departure from Motown. How something like the Jackson 5 cartoon TV series had adversely impacted on the public perception of what Jackson represented, or who he was, for example. That path was far from smooth, and the documentary is all the more essential for the depth of detail and context Spike Lee is able to provide.

There’s great concert footage from the era - some exhilarating stuff featuring Michael fronting The Jacksons, with the family band still very much a going concern during the making of Off The Wall (and well beyond). Quincy Jones and Stevie Wonder contribute interview snippets, as do various members of the Jackson family, while the more contemporary likes of Pharrell Williams, Questlove, John Legend, and Mark Ronson are on hand to offer perspective on why the album is special to each of them. Why individual tracks are personal favourites etc. There’s discussion around the background of various tracks and the production processes for each; how the individual parts contribute to the greater whole.

And what a “whole” it is! Yes, Thriller is the one people will always refer to as Jackson’s masterpiece, and it’s hard to argue with sales or numbers alone, but without Off The Wall - and I’d argue it has aged better - there would have been no Thriller. It really is as simple as that.

 

A Slice Of Heaven ... online

I’m just going to put this here. My regular reader (get a life, Mum!) will know how much I waffle on about NZ Musician magazine so it would be remiss of me not to share this fundraising campaign on behalf of the magazine. Even if I only reach a few people here. Basically, the now 27-year-old publication is the only hard-copy magazine which focuses solely on New Zealand music – it’s an industry staple for NZ-based musicians, written (mostly) by NZ-based musicians. It’s a complimentary magazine or music shop pick-up which pretty much relies on selling advertising space in order to survive. It generates very little income from sales (although there is a subscription offer available). The magazine’s website is currently undergoing a major revamp, with a big part of that project being a commitment to uploading the massive archive of past issues. Which essentially amounts to creating an online post-1990 history of everything good and great about New Zealand music. Hell, even the bits that aren’t so good or so great. That naturally means a lot of additional resource and cost on a very limited budget. Which is where you come in. I figure, if you’re here visiting everythingsgonegreen – quite aside from being a bit bonkers – you’re probably a music fan. Most likely a NZ-based fan of NZ music. So you know what needs to happen next. As good causes go, this one is near and dear. Click here and throw some copper at the best fundraising opportunity you’ll get all year … and check out this colourful montage of magazine covers ...

Big Youth - Screaming Target - Higher Light Remix

Coming to us out of France earlier this week, via Brigante Records, a Higher Light remix album featuring five tracks (and five dub versions thereof) from Big Youth's album Screaming Target. Released in 1972, Screaming Target is widely regarded as a stone cold classic within Jamaican DJ circles, and Higher Light's digi-bass-centric treatment takes nothing away from the vocals of ace toaster Big Youth on this updated re-versioning. Check it out - it's a free download on the Brigante Records Bandcamp page:

Prince and I: Farewell to The Purple One

When I logged onto my various social media handles on Friday morning (NZT) I could scarcely believe what I was reading. It had to be a hoax. Some sick joke. It was April 22nd not April 1st, and hadn't 2016 already been enough of a cruel mistress to music fans and pop culture fiends? Apparently not. Prince was dead. At just 57 years of age.

I wasn’t a fan of everything Prince did. His output was always a bit hit and miss for me, and I’ll admit that I’m unfamiliar with all but his most recent of post-2000 work. But the Prince stuff I did like, I absolutely loved, even if it wasn’t always the most obvious stuff. For example, I never quite got the whole Purple Rain thing, the album and the movie, and for me, many of the songs from that era felt a little too wannabe-Hendrix, and just wound up being too Hendrix-lite. Yet for many, that work and that period is what he’ll be best remembered for. I get that. And I get that he was a sensational guitarist in his own right. Apologies, Prince, it wasn’t you, it was me.

 

 

That said, there was a lot to love, and like Bowie before him, Prince was one of those artists who was omnipresent throughout my lifetime. He was everywhere, sound-tracking everything, for better and for worse. That’s why people mourn. We didn’t know the man personally, we’re not family, but we grieve because he takes a little bit of each of us, snippets of our past, with him. Or rather, we’ve taken bits of Prince (songs, albums, movies) and made them part of our lives. We mourn the memory of that. The loss of that. That’s how I see it. How I saw it with Bowie, Michael Jackson before that, and now with Prince.

Rather than pen some sort of obituary, which I’m ill-equipped to write, I thought I’d celebrate his life and mark his passing with a short list of five key Prince moments, as they relate specifically to me and to my life. The reasons why I consider myself a Prince fan – while not a fan of everything he did. If you can appreciate the distinction. This is the stuff I loved (and love). My own most memorable Prince moments, if you will:

I Wanna Be Your Lover

… “I want to be your brother, I want to be your mother and your sister, too. There ain't no other. That can do the things that I'll do to you” … I was a mere slip of a schoolboy in late 1979 or early 1980 when Prince burst into my eardrums with this sublime piece of sleaze-funk. It was everything Michael Jackson wasn’t. Not wholesome and glossy. It was down and dirty. Sly and suggestive. Full of exactly the sort of thing that would get any pubescent schoolboy sniggering covertly. I’m sure I recall an interview I read, around this time, or perhaps it was a few years later, where Prince talked about being fascinated by porn. It may have even referred to his Mum’s collection of porn magazines … yes, his Mum’s collection … and it all just seemed too weird to even contemplate. Weird, but kind of honest and exciting. Like nobody else was. ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’ was his first big hit, and his reputation as the beholder of disco’s dirtiest mind was cemented with the release of the Dirty Mind (yes!) and Controversy albums in 1980 and 1981. Note that it wasn’t the things he’d do “for” us, it was the things he’d do “to” us … the dirty blighter.

 

Under The Cherry Moon

Everybody raves about Purple Rain. The song, the album, the movie, and the era. And to be fair, everything Prince touched between 1982 and 1985 turned to gold. Platinum or triple platinum, even. And Purple Rain garnered Prince an Oscar for best score. I wasn’t a fan. A couple of years later, Prince won a Golden Raspberry – the opposite of an Oscar, and yes it is an actual thing – for his acting and directing of Under The Cherry Moon. It was, from all accounts, an awful film. Or should I say, from all “other” accounts, because to this day I still love Under The Cherry Moon. I love its blatant attempt to rip-off so-called “film noir” sensibilities – it was shot entirely in black and white, and reeked of all things art deco. I love that it was superficial and pretentious. For all that critics pan it precisely for those characteristics, it was exactly as it’s supposed to be. It’s a story of forbidden love and Prince was wonderful in the lead role as Christopher Tracy. Okay, some of his acting was ridiculous, but it’s wonderful because he was hilarious rather than occasionally terrible. None of that is really all that important though – the best thing about Under The Cherry Moon is that it was sound-tracked by Prince’s 1986 album Parade, which was, according to me, the second best album he ever made (see ‘Kiss’, ‘Girls And Boys’, and the brilliant slice of sleeper-funk that is ‘Mountains’). I had a cassette copy of Parade in my car for years and it never let me down as a reliable go-to listen.

Sign O The Times

It’s 1987, and I’m sitting in the lounge of my Rintoul Street (Wellington, NZ) flat, while my flatmate John, a local club DJ, is introducing me to his latest batch of brand new vinyl when suddenly, boom! … “in France, a skinny man died of a big disease with a little name. By chance his girlfriend came across a needle and soon she did the same. At home there are seventeen-year-old boys and their idea of fun is being in a gang called 'The Disciples' high on crack, totin' a machine gun” … right there, dance music would never be quite the same ever again. One of those “where were you when you first heard?” moments I still recall three decades later. Like I say, forget Purple Rain, forget going crazy, crying doves, little red corvettes, raspberry berets, or partying like it’s 1999. ‘Sign O The Times’ was Prince’s true masterpiece. As a song and as an album. This was a career highpoint and he’d gone from faux-Hendrix porn-funker to right-on social commentator in one giant leap. And of course it helped that the tune’s relatively simple groove struts along like a particularly cocky free-range rooster on acid. One of the best songs of its decade, and it almost felt like Prince wasn’t even trying.

Nothing Compares 2 U

I love how Prince used text-speak way before texts were even a thing. Actually, I’m quite sure there was a lot of stuff he did way before other mere mortals caught on. But we won’t go into those gory details here. This is a family blog. Would Sinead O’Connor have been the star she became if he hadn’t written this break-up masterclass and gifted it to her? I very much doubt it. There was talent there, for sure, but ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ launched the crazy baldhead into the global stratosphere (albeit temporarily). I was going through a particularly dramatic relationship breakdown in late 1989, early 1990, when this was all the rage, and I came to despise everything about this song. Except Sinead, who I’d formed a secret relationship with (if only she’d known, huh?). Which basically means I liked the song so much, I gorged myself on it until I was utterly heart sick of it. To the extent I couldn’t bear to listen to it ever again. Gawd, what a lame arse. I can laugh about it now of course (*weak smile*) and it wasn’t until a few years later that I learned our man had written it. Suddenly the mist cleared and everything made sense. Prince’s version is great if not quite as compelling.

 

Gett Off!

… “Get off, twenty three positions in a one night stand. Get off, I'll only call you after if you say I can. Get off, let a woman be a woman and a man be a man (squeal)” … it was the autumn of 1992 and I fancied myself as a club-night promoter. My closest friend (of the day) and I hired Wellington’s Reactor nightclub (in Edward Street, above what is now Meow) and planned for a Sunday night gig. We called the night “Delerium”, and as it turned out, all the fun was in the weeks of promotion and not the actual event itself. It rained heavily on the night. We had friends run the door. They had friends who had names on the door. Hardly anyone paid to get in. The bar staff were our friends and friends of the clientele. Hardly anyone bought drinks. We had an acoustic duo (an early version of what would become the hard-rocking Desert Road band) open the night. Then a performance DJ (DJ Glide) and three or four other DJs. Then an “exotic dancer” from Brazil. Everyone needed to be paid. My friend and I lost a lot of money. It was a night I wanted to forget, but the performance of the exotic dancer – a hunk of a man called Marconi, who later became a male trolley dolly on a TV show called Sale of the Century – was something I can never really forget. His performance – like his cladding – was brief, and he danced to Prince’s ‘Gett Off’ like nobody had ever danced to anything else (ever) … it showcased Prince at his finest, and sleaze-funk was evidently right back on top (no pun). And that four-to-five minutes of bittersweet turmoil will always best represent Nineties’ Prince for me, albeit Prince as interpreted by somebody else’s moves. As much as I’ve tried to forget. It partially saved an otherwise rather forlorn night.

And so we come full circle. Prince means many things to many people. Many different things to many different people. For me, he was a musical genius who gave me all of the moments listed above. And a whole lot more. He’ll have touched you (and many others) in completely different ways, obviously, but just writing this has been a form of catharsis for me. A way of trying to give his sudden death some kind of context or perspective. I’m lucky to be able to share these memories with you. Thanks for reading. And thanks Prince, for being there all the way.

R.I.P Prince Rogers Nelson (June 7, 1958 – April 21, 2016)

Diversity And Collaboration

I mentioned a little while back that I was lucky enough to collaborate on the cover feature for the February/March 2016 issue of NZ Musician. My interview with up-and-coming young Auckland-based hip hop/jazz/pop/jam outfit Yoko-Zuna took place during the height of the festive season, and although I was pretty satisfied with the final result, it was a far from straightforward process involving a couple of revised versions of the feature. It all felt a little messy from my perspective, but ultimately we got there in the end. Since then I’ve been afforded an advance listen of the band’s next release – an EP – which sounds every bit as good as last year’s impressive debut album. I can’t wait for that one to be released, and firmly believe Yoko-Zuna have a very big future. Click here to read the very appropriately titled Diversity and Collaboration.

Album Review: Pet Shop Boys - Super (2016)

Damn you, Pet Shop Boys. With your superficial gloss and flash bombastic hooks. And damn my insomnia. With the annoying "and they called us the pop kids" refrain/chorus (from PSB's latest cheesy single) repeating itself mercilessly over and over in my head all throughout the night.

Where’s the humanity?

'The Pop Kids' is the first offering from Super, album number 13 from the Pet Shop Boys. Super also happens to be the duo's 13th consecutive studio album with a one-word title. As things stand, a couple of listens in - and I'm not sure I can bear another - it really doesn't appeal as being particularly super. Quite the opposite.

I know I'm not supposed to take this stuff too seriously. It's shameless pop and PSB haven't been relevant on any "serious" level for at least a quarter of a century. If they ever were at all. I'm not even really sure why I picked this one up. Seduced perhaps by the ever-so-slight return to form that was 2013's Electric, which at least contained the wonderful 'Fluorescent'. There's nothing quite so mitigating here, despite Stuart Price again being on production duties.

All the usual themes abound - nights out (not least on the aforementioned 'The Pop Kids'), relationships, reflections on a distant youth etc. But mostly this becomes an exercise in self-parody, and where you could once rely on PSB to throw up a requisite quota of clever irony or amusing lyrics, even that is no longer guaranteed. It's perhaps telling that the best thing on Super is the track which contains the least number of words or lyrics (and/or therefore vocals), a retro club banger called 'Inner Sanctum' - and even that's a gigantic slab of cheddar.

Sample lyric, on 'Burn':

… "all the stars are flashing high above the sea, and the party is on fire around you and me, we're gonna burn this disco down before the morning comes (repeat three times) .... it feels so good (repeat four times)" ...

Really? Yawn. All hooks aside, I'm not convinced it does actually feel all that good anymore … and did the world really need yet another song about burning down the disco? (cliché much?)

If Electric was indeed the return to form it was touted to be at the time, then it was surely only a temporary condition, and Super has the duo slipping back into a form of auto-pilot, back to type, with irrelevant lightweight fluff very much the order of the day.

In my review for Electric I wrote about my own deteriorating relationship with the duo’s music over the years, concluding that I was a very conditional and still only occasional “fan”, but Super takes things to a new low, and this time out I fear our differences have finally become irreconcilable.

 

Here's 'Inner Sanctum' ...