May 5th, 2006 1:34pm
It’s A Cruel Joke, A Cosmic Hoax
Gorillaz “Kids With Guns (Hot Chip Remix)” – I’m not sure if I’ve ever gone into it on this site, but back around the late 90s, I was a pretty hardcore Blur fan. I mean, technically, that has not changed – I still rate those albums very highly even if the only songs I’ve revisited with any frequency in the past few years have been my top favorites from the self-titled album. So, as you might imagine, the massive success of the Gorillaz in America is especially weird to me, since I think that Demon Days (though a pretty decent record on its own terms) is the second worst album of Damon Albarn’s career, following Liesure. (Let’s just ignore the soundtrack and that Democrazy thing.) Though the Gorillaz can knock out a gem as good as most any Blur classic (“19-2000,” “Dirty Harry,” “Dare,” “Every Planet We Reach Is Dead,” “Feel Good Inc.,” “Rehash,” “5/4,” “Slow Country”), both albums are largely comprised of tossed-off filler by a songwriter who definitely can do much better.
“Kids With Guns” falls on the line separating the hits from the misses – on the album, it’s a bit too leaden and directionless, but gets by on some clever production and some decent rhythmic hooks. Hot Chip improve on the track significantly, immediately dropping the claustrophobic quality of the original in favor of a spacious arrangement built around a simple melancholy keyboard figure that wouldn’t sound out of place on a post-Kid A Radiohead album. The vocal hooks don’t seem nearly as overbearing, and Neneh Cherry’s vocals are given some room to move and supply some degree of catharsis as the beat picks up in the second half of the track. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)
The Netherlands “Teenage Sun” – If you’re going to be a band that insists on putting all of its rock moves in aesthetic scare quotes, it’s absolutely necessary to bring some strong hooks to the table. The Netherlands tackle their big cheesy riffs with Weezer tactics, offering them up unapologetically while doing absolutely nothing to hide their dorky indie nature. Keyboards are prominent, the vocal melody sounds like it could have come off of a Folk Implosion record, and their sense of menace is closer to that of a Transformers cartoon than anything remotely macho or Satanic. This is about as close to metal as a bag of bbq potato chips tastes like a plate of ribs, but that’s not really a problem, is it? (Click here for the Netherlands’ MySpace page.)
Elsewhere:
Three great EMP papers: No Fat Chicks?: Weight and Rebellion During A Hard-Rock Adolescence by Maura Johnston, Lost In Translation: Musical Selection In Figure Skating by Maria Tessa Sciarrino, and A Double History of the Supremes’ “Love Child” by Michaelangelo Matos.
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