Isn't It Strange,

Back in the eighties Madonna caused a storm of controversy by having sex with a black Jesus in her 'Like A Prayer' video and now she's fucking a a Brazilian supermodel named Jesus; her sex-life is begin to feel like a Biblical "It's Small World" and technically she is Jewish and still waiting for the Messiah to come. Strange.

Get Blitzed,

With the wetness of a giddy school-girl I came across the leaked Yeah Yeah Yeah's 2009 album 'It's Blitz', all upsetting mental images aside. I set myself in motion and then sat back to indulge in the NYC's finests latest offerings. 

When first pressing play I found myself feeling apprehensive and little sick even; like seeing an old friend for the first time in years. Would I still have the same feeling of mesmerization and lust? Listening to 'It's Blitz' for the first time is disorienting and uneasy experience with stabs of pleasure, you find yourself searching for threads of the band you've become the band you've become accustomed to. You're dancing in your bedroom and wonder who the fuck are these people and how did they get into my house? ' Dance and disco is favoured over freneticism and guitar. It's engaging but it lacks  something . The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are intent on crashing the Dancehall but is it really them? Well, the anwser is yes. 'It's Blitz' has the somber and mutrure sound of 'Show Your Bones' cut in with vintage synths mirror-balls and disco-pop.

The album’s got heart, real, colorful, bleeding, stomping heart, and it’s laid out in soaring fashion. The beauty's in the details, and they love it that way.  It's hard not to be intoxicated by the soaring vintage synths and Karen O's dirty dancehall banshee vocals. The lyrics are still raw, edgy and sometimes just fucking heartbreakingly beautiful such as in Skeleton, Hysteric or Runaway which rival 'Maps' or 'Turn Into' for sheer emotional rawness. Runaway especially with it's spine-tingling piano cords and Karen O's dove-like cooing and pleading repetitions. It's in the tumbling and stabbing bass of 'Dull Life' and 'Shame Fortune' you find your feet with a return to traditional form. The triumph is in tracks 'Zero', 'Dragon Queen', and 'Heads Will Roll'. These sound as blinding, sensual digital assaults on the dance-floor should. Even in the gentler 'Soft Shock' the chiming synth&  a whirling electronics twist and pull at your limbs.

I'm no musical journalist despite my pretensions here. The truth is this album will put you out of place and trap itself in your skull, on repeat. Those Yankee bastards.

Poppin'A CapInCulture!

After being pummeled by sugar indie guitar bop along bands such as 'The Kooks' & 'The Wombats', Pop is once again rearing it's ugly head and making it cool to dance in your bedroom mirror. Ever since the Foals try to sell us pop under the guise of mathematic art, the reinvention of Pop has been unstoppable and the last year disco beats& seductive synths have been pushing back into the public ear. The new era of pop is about combining playful sounds with witty lyrics & cut-throat image; it's a tougher than the face of pop we've known but fuck me it's exciting. 

Doing It Right; Santogold, The Virgins, Chewlips, Apes And Androids & Mystery Jets.

Doing It Wrong; Kanye 'Auto-Tune' West, Lady Gaga.

Honorable Mention; Girls Aloud for making nonsense lyrics, dance routines and matching outfits acceptable in NME & Ms Britney Spears who could be the poster-girl  for the drug addled reemergence of pop. 

YOU SCORE530 ART TOSSPOINTS

You like satirical guerrilla art, but ever since Banksy’s anarchic but intelligent graffiti has became an artist study in every fifteen year olds sketchbook and adored by every Notting Hill housewife you’ve found that the once cherished love affair with the anonymous art-vandal began to wane.

Fear no more, smash and grab culture has a new idol, Invader.  He plays art like a game, making his own rules, deciding where and when to play and he just keeps scoring. His game consists of invading cities with mosaics depicting Space Invader and Pac-man inspired pixel characters, smuggling them onto walls, signs, pillars even the letters of the HOLLYWOOD sign have been graced by his images. So far forty cities across five continents have unknowing played host to Invader’s ‘reality game’; some have suffered multiple waves.

“Most of the time, I try to adapt myself to the local styles” he explains. In Kathmandu, Nepalthe 1970’s game characters spawn extra limbs or are adorned with the ‘Third Eye’ a symbolic red dot between the eyes similar to many images of local deities. In London one such character is depicted in full union-jack glory. Some critics have called his work ‘western cannibalism’, they accuse Invader of seeking out one cultures holiest locales and degrading them with our most trivial, mindless pixelated deities.

The images are playful and surprising, catching sight of one is likely to hit you with a wave of nostalgia and amusement. They kind of thing that will keep you smiling through out the day like seeing a pretty girl blush slightly when she trips in a busy street.

   

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Telepathe

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So I am in love once again & another victory for awkward tomboys worldwide has been secured. TELEPATHE; Busy Gangnes &  Melissa Livaudais have that androgynous, dressed in her mum's clothes from the eighties, watches too much Pretty In Pink and never drinks at parties look about them but their brand of ritualistic noise-pop is intoxicating. 

'So Fine' combines a pulsing bass, crystalline pop electronica & surreal choral vocals. It's all abit like reading french poetry in a gay night club, when you're that kind of sinking drunk& their upcoming album 'Dance Mother' promises more of the sweet sounding macabre.  I'd buy it. 

Also See:

'God Is Watching'

'Standing In Your Line'

'Chrome's On It' & Sinsita Militia