27th April, 1998
Another vintage week. Hurrah.
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"Push It" by GarbageSometime a song sashays along that pushes aside all the pale, never-had-a-shag indie nonsense, leaving dismembered weedy limbs in its sex monster wake. "Push It" is one such song - composed entirely of primeval, sexual sounds - that grabs you by whichever organ is handiest and does something that makes you go weak at the knees. Mocked from all sides for - shock - being successful on their own terms (i.e. without the music press building them up), Garbage care not a jot, pulling on their black leather glad rags and smouldering away like incense in a drug-filled dream of grandoise noise and great sex. So when Shirley purrs "don't worry baby, we'll stay up all night" like some alien sex goddess, it is worth several thousand Mulder and Scullys and more than a few drugs not working. Crush and burn. The b-sides are admirably begun in pounding metalworks fashion with "Lick The Pavement", a massive hammering beast of industrial beats and dark guitar shards, in which Shirley declares (or is that orders?) that "I like you best when you're on your knees". Whimper. The other extra track is the "Boom Boom Satellites" mix of "Push It", taking the original, sucking out the bones and filling it with weird discordant beats and samples. Don't believe those that tell you not to like Garbage because they are a manufactured band and not "4 Real" (yawn). All pop music is false; plastic and meaningless by its very nature. What matters is whether or not the music moves you in some fashion, getting you either in the head or pounding you in the chest. Sure, "Push It" is not as cerebral as some, but it gives you such a pummelling in the ribcage that by the time the song is over you end up looking like John Hurt in Alien. Lecture ends. Rating: 10/10
The Rest"A Film For The Future" by Idlewild"Mince Showercap (part 1)" (yum yum) is next, where Roddy lets loose all the screaming that he kept pent up in the a-side. Sounding more like The Pixies than Boston's finest ever did themselves, this is a freak-out chaotic assault that takes a couple of prisoners. But then nonchalantly kills them, like Christopher Walken in True Romance, but perhaps even scarier. Definitely madder, as some bloke recites a recipe over the outro. "What Am I Going To Do?" brings up the rear (fnarr - well it was the 40th anniversary of the Carry-On films yesterday) with a no-messin million mph blast of punk fury, taking two minutes to run round the lunatic asylum with its head ablaze. Flame on. Idlewild are coming into your life one way or another. I suggest you let them in, before they firebomb your house. Rating: 9.5/10
"Teardrop" by Massive Attack"Euro Zero Zero" is next, a typically unsettling Massive Attack track that mixes unexpected yet perfectly-matched sounds together in a big blender, pouring out the smoothest sonic milkshake you could ever hope for. Two mixes of "Teardrop" follow, the first by Brendan Lynch creating an ambient alien soundscape for Fraser to flit around like a Venusian butterfly. The second - "Mad Professor Mazaruni Instrumental Mix" - is not strictly what it says, instead taking syllables of the vocals and turning them into instruments themselves, resulting in a rather eerie whole, filled with the ghosts of dead aliens. Rating: 9/10
"Candlelight" by Six By SevenThe awe-inspiring punk metal riffs of "Young Man's Stride" blast forth next, impressing perhaps even more than the a-side. Somewhere in the hurricane of noise that this song whips up, you can hear the likes of U2 being crucified on a Marshall stack taller than King Kong (and you thought I'd get though this one without a tenuous film reference - wrong). The Flaming Lips remix of "Candlelight" brings things to an impressive end, instrumentalising the track and dressing it in some funky threads. Rating: 9/10
"Bad Old Man" by Baby Bird"Fukluv" again stands up and shouts "me me me me me!" but no-one's around to take any notice, and by the time "Hospital" gets into gear, the only person left listening is Baby Bird's mad old uncle Bob. And he's deaf. Rating: 3/10
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