Filthy Little Angels Singles Club : ep 3
The Fairies Band, a bunch of London dandies with names
such as Twinkle and Tinsel, open this split single with the memorably
monickered Pink Socks
Rock(Fuck My Hole). Which is an exuberant stop-start, fast-and-loose
number veering back and forth between taut and flailing, full of snappy
tick-tock rhythms and sharp-edged guitars. It's kinda reminiscent of
Elastica(quirky, rhythmic, lots of dual-vocal harmonies, that same feeling
of working to a hey-what-happens-if-we-do-this template) but wilder
and more ramshackle.
Their second, completely contrasting track Colonel Bright is a rippling
acoustic song, far more melodic and gentle than Pink Socks in its telling
of the title character's weaving her way home drunk, her fishnets in
shreds. The Fairies Band are equally competent playing melancholy acoustic
ditties as they are flashing gratuitous obscenity and silliness over
ridiculously catchy tunes with a scrambled, good natured energy, though
I get the
impression they prefer the latter activity...
Cambridge based nihilism/cabaret anti-crusaders The Vichy
Government are a very different beast, with vocal delivery sliding from
deadpan statement to laconic sneer over the creaking of minimalist keyboards.
We have here a biting dismissal of plastic surgery in The Immortals,
contemplating a time when plastic surgery sees people rotting from the
inside out as their innards decay before their artificial skins die:
"The silicon melts/And
drips out of their arse." Slower number Oliver Cromwell in Weimar
Berlin(A Puritan lost in the city of sin) drips mockery from every note;
it could be a critique of uptight Puritanism, or of mindless pleasure
seeking, or of both the above, or just a massive joke at the the listener's
expense. VG's songs are cutting and vicious, spitting contempt and derision
at all things
both modern and ancient through a spoken-word jeering of a vocal. And,
incidentally, through what, dressed differently, could be some damn
good pop songs - it's just that VG heavily disguise the medium under
the bile and bitterness of the message. Who needs pretty melodies and
dance floor filler when your songs are loaded with so much intelligent
bitterness and black spite that it crystallises on the edges of the
notes?
Wild-eyed escapist energetic silliness twinned with black and biting
cynical realism. A seemingly strange choice of split single partners,
seeing as
their melodic styles and ideas of what music should be differ so wildly.
Possibly it's a cunning plan to trick the record-buying public into
widening their horizons by buying something they'd never usually listen
to... Risk falling for something completely different at filthylittleangels.com
or alternatively you can buy the record from either thefairies.tk
or
verot.net/vichygov
Holl(i)y
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