Fuck Buttons - Surf Solar

I went and watched Fuck Buttons last night performing an in-store set at Rought Trade East.

A couple of points;

1. Why do I always get the tallest, biggest-and-smelliest-haired, head-bopping freak in the room standing right in front of me? About one minute before Fuck Buttons were due on I thought I was sitting pretty, and then this lanky great loser pushes in front of me (remember, we're in a record store, and despite the gig status you just don't expect this kind of jostling. Would you stand for that kind of behaviour at the Pick 'N' Mix in Woolworths?) and starts bopping his head all over the shop, continuing threatening to stick his filthy mop in my face with every swing. Most disconcerting. It's not even as though he was so taken with the music that he couldn't control himself; he kept stopping every minute or so to take a look around and check who was watching him and look at his mobile phone. What a cunt. "Oh, I can't possibly enjoy myself watching live music if I'm further than 3 metres from the stage, which is why I have to barge my way in and ponce about like I'm in Ibiza on a pills-and-cock binge."

2. IT WAS JUST WAY TOO LOUD. I know I am grumpier and olde-before-my time than most, but I still want to be going to gigs and listening to music when I'm 50, and this sort of din can do some serious damage. Uncomfortable.

Other than that the show was fine. There has been a lot of rhetoric put out there, mostly by ATP, about Fuck Buttons, which to me just doesn't ring true. Highlight of the set, 'Bright Tomorrow' is a fantastic track, building up swathes of vintage electronic sound to its glorious, screaming finale, but almost all the rest of their material last night seemed like a pale imitation of this song. Fuck Buttons are just too formulaic to hold my interest over the course of half an hour.

Of course, I couldn't resist picking up their new 7" with all its picture-disc goodness, even if the £4.99 price tag for two tracks seems a little hefty.

The A side is a 7" edit of 'Surf Solar' and is the first track taken from upcoming album Tarot Sport produced by Andrew Weatherall, whose name for some reason, I always confuse with Andrew Ridgeley. I'm not sure what Ridgeley is up to these days, but is it so hard to imagine him as the fat-cat producer of cutting edge indie/electro acts whilst George does community service and spunks up walls?

So, 'Surf Solar' follows the familiar pattern of being kind of interesting with some exciting sounds and textures, but never quite soars as high as 'Bright Tomorrow', nor reaches any kind of satisfying conclusion. I am hoping that it is merely the time constraints of the 7" format that have neutered this track and that the 10min-plus album version will be a revelation.

What do I like most about a new 7" single? A lovely bit of non-album sounds on the B-side. Here we have 'New Crossbow' which has a kind of non-intrusive tribally beat behind it, with a whooping, swooping sound and lots of glimmering, sparkling bits, and kind of meanders on its way to nowhere in particular for a few minutes. Quite nice, and a bit more interesting that the A-side, but I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to it.

The brilliant artwork comes from Benjamin John Power who may or may not be responsible for mid-to-late 90s British shitstorm of arse-drippings, Cast.

Tarot Sport is out next Monday 12th October.

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Sweet N Sour

Third and final in my unplanned trilogy of Pussy Galore-related reviews is The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's 'Sweet N Sour', released 24th June 2002.

The track was the second single from 2002's Plastic Fang, an album that found the raucous rock 'n' roll revivalist sound of JSBX sounding increasingly hollow and cliched. By this point in the band's career they sounded like they were flogging a dead horse. The act was always more about style and attitude over substance, but here the songs, and Spencer's vocals particularly, sound like a pastiche, sans the irony, and do little to set themselves aside from their already vast back catalogue of samey material. For me, JSBX begins and ends with 'Blues X Man' and once you've heard and loved that all that's left is album upon album of songs that are similar but not quite as good.

All that said, 'Sweet N Sour' isn't a bad track. If I'd never had heard a rock 'n' roll song before I'd have said this was brilliant, but as it is, this comes across at best as a novelty or at worst a tired retread. The video is HOT though, produced by Swedish collective StyleWar:





This type of music usually lends itself better to the live experience (how good can shaking, sweaty RnR be in the confines of your home?) and I remember seeing a smoking performance on Later with Jools Holland, memorable not only for Jools' piano accompaniment, but for Spencer stomping all over said piano. You just can't capture this stuff on disc:





The artwork ties in to the concept of the Plastic Fang album, with all design by Chip Kidd. Kidd is a pretty big name in graphic and sleeve design (particularly books) and has used his success in this field to manoeuvre himself into music and writing. There's nothing that special about the imagery on show here; just some pretty cool retro graphics inspired by 60s comic-books and B-movies that match the Blues Explosion's punkabilly/rock 'n' roll throwback aesthetic well.



The B-side is a live version of 'Shakin' Rock 'n' Roll Tonight' (the album version later becoming the third and final single from Plastic Fang) that was recorded during a session for Dutch radio station VPRO on 9th February 2002. From what I've said above you can probably already infer what I think about this one. Let's just say it's better than the album version and call it a day!

Devo - The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprize

Following on from the Melvins' 'Night Goat' is another record with a Pussy Galore connection. But I'll get to that later.

This song is taken from Devo's second LP, 1979's Duty Now for the Future and reflects the slight shift away from the edgier post-punk sound of their debut, Q: Are We Not Men A: We are Devo (1978), towards the synth-pop of 1980's Freedom of Choice. The album is certainly weaker than Q: Are We Not Men?.., in that most of the material had been around since 1976-7, as heard on a multitude of bootlegs, and was basically the stuff that hadn't made the cut for the first album. Interesting, then, that the sound should be stylistically so different; something that can probably be put down to the approach of producer Ken Scott (as opposed to that of Brian Eno on their debut).

'The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprize' is a highlight of the album, being pretty much a straight-up pop song, but with some typically idiosyncratic drumming and a chorus sung in an almost pseudo-lounge refrain. The lyrics seem to refer to a girl making her boyfriend aware of an unplanned pregnancy ("Got a message from my girl / When she picked up the pen from beside the bed and wrote me a scribbled note") and how this affects their relationship ("Go out on a loving spree just like before the accident / My baby would look at me").

The music video refers to these themes in a somewhat flippant manner as the boys examine a crying baby in a sterile control room, and later have trouble with the cheeky tike when he takes off flying. We also get to see a potato playing a hippopotamus's tooth! What's not to like?

The sleeve of this record is one of my favourite, being completely independent from the art concepts of the album it's from. It's an old photograph blown up with the Devo logo and the title in a pretty funky typeface slapped on top. This thing is creepy, but in a wacky sort of way; jolly yet sinister. It's pretty much generally accepted that clowns are creepy. And everyone knows masks are creepy. But look at the way that guy's mask appears to be one with his face. And this is before the days of digital photo touch-ups. The whole thing hints at something darker under the face of Americana, which is pretty much the general theme to most of Devo's work.



The back cover is also rather fetching and always reminds me of Gilbert and George.



The B-side is 'Penetration in the Centrefold'; a song covered by Pussy Galore on their Sugarshit Sharp E.P. to such successful effect that it convincingly sounds like an original Jon Spencer composition, both musically and lyrically. It doesn't sound much like a Devo song and even when you hear the original it still doesn't sound much like a Devo song. Well, not 1979 Devo. At a stretch it sounds like it could fit in with the more weird, experimental and troubling compositions on Hardcore Vol. 2 that Devo were writing in the mid-1970s, but it seems anachronistic as the B-side to this single. Not that it's not enjoyable - its just such an odd little song and there's really not anything else like it that I've heard: nasty guitar; squealing synth noises; stop-start verses leading to a clattering caterwaul of a 'chorus'; Mark's desperate, half-barked vocals and the whole thing dressed up in a lyric about the unappetising subject matter of a hardcore porn mag that displays, ahem, 'penetration in the centrefold'. This is unpalatable and ugly, yet fascinating and compulsive; a track to rubberneck to.



Production credit for this one goes to Eno, so I'd guess it was recorded during the Q: Are We Not Men?... sessions and left off the album for obvious reasons. It's since been tacked on to various Devo compact disc reissues so go check it out.

Duty Now!