Trying to describe Pavement's music is like trying to juggle blancmange, but hey - I like a challenge...Imagine 40 years of pop culture Americana strained through a sieve and mixed with equal pinches of surrealism ("be patient and I'll let you see my carrot rope" - promises, promises), dissonant guitars that sound like they're being played by slacker chimpanzees, then finally folded into alternating layers of marshmallow narcolepsy and spacehoppy-poppy dumbness. Aw hell - just buy the thing and listen to it yourself. Be assured, if it's innovation you're after, you've parked your moped outside the right lunatic asylum.
"Harness Your Hopes" is more immediate, with some superb nonsense-rhyme lyrics ("show me a word that rhymes with Pavement, and I will kill your parents and roast them on a spit") holding together a big goofy grin of a tune that walks round in circles for three minutes before it realises it hasn't got anywhere and surfs off into the sunset on waves of 50s-style guitar. "Roll With The Wind" is almost normal, a Stones-like gem of
rock and roll bad behaviour. Only the bizarro lyrics about letter bombs and xerox machines betray it as another chapter in Pavement's bumper book of maverick rock stories.
Rating: 10/10
The Rest
1000 Clowns have obviously been cyrogenically frozen since the days of Daisy Age rap, if "(Not The) Greatest Rapper" is anything to go by. A hippy-dippy melange of De La Soul-style optimism and Deee-Lite hedonism, this song features a modest rapper by the name of Kevi who relates a tale of good old-fashioned courting and story-book romance, all the while admitting that he's "not the greatest rapper in the world" (he's right - the likes of Ice-T have nothing to worry about). For all I know in real life he may be a drug-fuelled gangsta who has done time for Uzi-related crimes, but on record he pins together a summery scrapbook of lazy loops, flute samples and female backing singers going "okay" a lot. All in all the sort of music that just makes you want to sit down in the middle of whatever you're doing with a big stupid expression on your face and pick flowers.
One b-side is nothing more than an instrumental version of the a-side, but "Rainy Days" is another laid-back and mellow track that sails away on memory bliss with its gently-strummed guitar samples, soft-spoken rap from Kevi and cute and alluring female backing vocals.
Incidentally, judging by a very short straw poll in my house, you either find the female backing singers in 1000 Clowns cute and alluring, or annoying girly and exploitative (it's a guy/gal thing). My cat was unavailable for comment, but did however sleep through the entire CD.
Rating: 8/10
In the packaging (four EXCLUSIVE prints!!) and video for Geri Halliwell's debut solo outing, ole ginge minge (woops...) portrays herself in four differing and contrasting personas: Vamp, Sister, Virgin and Bitch. Now some would say there is at least one more member of her schizophrenic family (Twat, for instance), but credit to the flame-haired one - she appears to be back on her own terms and with a pretty strong big n sassy diva offering to show for herself. Lyrics are a bit dodgy ("good looking, bad tasting, full bodied, butt wasted" - I don't think I want to ponder about what the various connotations of "butt wasted" are), and the middle bit where the song slows down to a jazz swing funeral pace is a bit crap, but on the whole this sure-fire numero uno stomps all over your frontal lobe until it pummels you into gibbering submission. Not the kind of girl you should ignore (her airplay blitzkrieg does not allow you to do otherwise), but neither one you should take seriously in any way whatsoever. Fair played to her - at least she never duetted with Bryan Adams...
B-sides are remixes. "Mark!s Big Vocal Mix Surgery Edit" (sic) is a techno/house cheese feast, whilst - bizarrely enough - the "Terminalhead Remix" makes the unspiced Ms Halliwell sound almost exactly like Garbage.
Things are rounded off nicely with the video, a black and white bit of fluff that sees Geri get her aforementioned personas out for the camera.
Now all we're waiting for is Posh Spice's prog rock triple concept LP...
Rating: 8/10
The entire "comeback" scene has got a bit ridiculous of late - these days you scarcely have to have gone for a consecutive period of three months between single releases to constitute a reformation almost as lauded as the original members of the Beatles (including the dead one) turning up to play your local pub. The Happy Mondays are the latest group of reprobates to take that bandwagon for a joyride with this marvellously loose-fitting and shambolic take on the old Thin Lizzy track. They're all here: Bez, Shaun, Rowenta (or whatever) - everyone apart from those Mondayblokes that no-one can remember anyway. And together they make a noise like a big bag of spanners being dropped in the middle of a disco on baggy revival night. Which is no particular bad thing.
An old remix of "Lazyitis" props up the b-side, a superb example of the Monday's old sticky-fingered genius, with its mixture of at least three different songs blended together to make something quite original (even if one of them was by David Essex). The full version of "The Boys Are Back In Town" lurks menacingly at the back,
all foul-mouthed and cantankerous, like a particularly nasty uncle pissed at a party.
There is an unescapable overall feeling of "mmmm...so what?" about this whole offering however.
Rating: 7/10
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