Over half a dozen albums from artists who came to (relative) prominence during the electroclash movement have released albums this year. That's weird since after they came to prominence, most of them immediately fell out of it. Even for a genre (or pastiche, to be totally accurate) of dance music as self-celebratory and retro-obsessed as electroclash, the prospect of an eight-year turnaround for nostalgia seems far-fetched. Nobody cares and anyone who remembers it probably hates it. Take the most annoying coked-up person you've ever come across, throw some stars and glitter on him/her and set it to a tinny drum machine sound and basically you have an idea of 80 percent of the electroclash experience.
But electroclash holds a place in my heart, because during its time (roughly 2001 to 2002), I came of age socially, started going out more and was able to observe an actual scene (though to say I took part in it or was any sort of regular to it would be disingenuous). And you know, why not electroclash now? Current mainstream taste favors dance music to the point where some of the albums pictured above and described below make a hell of a lot more sense commercially now than they would have eight years ago. The best electroclash just rehashed good Italo disco, a genre that continues to be romanticized and interpolated via contemporary dance music. While Italo was probably bound to be revived and exploited anyway, electroclash got to it first on a widespread scale, and so the very least you could say about the movement is that it was onto something.
So, I figured that with all this electroclash-after-the-fact activity, there's a story there, maybe something piggybacking on SFJ's brilliant examination of the unpredictable and nonlinear nature of "relevance" in pop music (via his critique of Lady Ga Ga). Besides, thanks to reality TV and the Internet's never-ending nostalgia farming, it's a good time to be a has been.
The problem, of course, is that I'd actually have to listen to the music and that was a supreme challenge. I made a playlist of the six albums pictured above, but every time I put it on, I'd grow restless (or, you know, suicidal) after a few tracks and take it off. There's just too much other stuff out now that I like way more than 2/3 of the albums above. Electrik Red. The amazing Parra Soundsystem edits comp. The Kris Menace compilation. The Faze Action, Remute and Emperor Machine albums. Shit, there'd be times when I'd listen to something as commonplace as Shannon's "Let the Music Play" for the thousandth time on repeat over listening to this crap.
Because, you see, most of it is crap, so out of touch and narcissistic that these albums reach points where they become basically the musical equivalent of someone blowing coke up his own ass. Since these albums were such a chore to get through, I figured instead of some blow-out statement on them, I would merely challenge myself to listen to them all back-to-back while I recorded my thoughts.
I failed immediately.
"Immediately" is actually kind of a dramatic way to put it. I did make it through Miss Kittin & the Hacker's decent Two by listening to it on a run last weekend. (Here's my route, if you're curious. I made this last year because I was going to post on how many dead rats I was seeing on my route, and my suspicion that there was a plague underway, but neither the post or the plague panned out.) I've always thought Miss Kittin was underrated -- she's a good DJ with a knack for mixing hard and pop, she name-dropped Giorgio Moroder at least five years before Madonna figured it was cool to do so, and she came up with the phrase, "Motherfuckers are so nice." Hello, electroclash in a nutshell! She's become more human since she more or less dropped the stoic spoken facade bit and started singing in that little mosquito voice of hers. Her current on-record persona is a lot less intimidating (in the way that those girls who know everyone at the club are intimidating) than it used to be.
That said, Two could have been released any time in the past five or so years. It's just exactly what you'd expect from the pair - hard but palpable tracks with subtle pop tendencies that reference the usual suspects (including EBM - remember when that was supposed to be the next big new old thing?). The best track here, hands down, is the disco cover of Elvis' "Suspicious Minds," which is not just a reference to the King but to NRGetic reworkings of his stuff, especially Pet Shop Boys' "Always On My Mind." It's a mutli-layered reference, and where this kind of music is concerned, we call that depth.
And so, in sum: Two is a completely serviceable running accompaniment, although I haven't returned to it since I listened to it specifically for this post. However, between then and now, Kittin's droll, ESL ways did inspire a poem on the way we live in 2009 that I will share with you now:
Infinity, Cats
I’m typing an Internet
Blog entry
Hate this
Love that
Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate
LOL, so funny.
You comment on my comments
I comment on your comments
We exchange ironies
Comment comments comment comments
Infinity.
Cats.
The end!
(Or is it?)
Can you tell I'm procrastinating? Yeah. I fucking cleaned (cleaned!) after listening to Kittin to avoid the album that was on deck in this endurance challenge. It was here that I basically failed because it took me hours to get around to listening to and taking notes on:
Fischerspooner - Entertainment
I'd sampled this before and hated it. I actually think that Fischerspooner have produced one and a half good songs in their career ("Emerge" because it was the anthem electroclash needed, and "The 15th," because it was a Wire cover). Casey Spooner to me sounds like Neil Tennant giving up, and because so much of this act's shtick depends on their stage performances, their albums are more original cast recordings than anything. I think you probably need to watch Spooner lip synch in weird outfits in front of wind machines to appreciate this shit, but I'll be damned if I'm going to get my ass up off the couch for Fischerspooner.
Regardless, I pressed on. Here are my notes:
1. "The Best Revenge" - The combination of rock swagger and falsetto reminds me why I dislike Fischerspooner so much: they think they can do the pop-star thing and/or lampoon it without actual tunes. Warren Fischer's seeming love of anonymously cheap-sounding synths and drums has always put me off, but it's the lack of songwriting that's the real problem.
2. "We Are Electric" - In this song, Spooner says, "We are electric," and then a guitar wails. I think the implication is that they are electric guitars.
3. "Money Can't Dance" - In this economy, a line like "Dancing's best at beating inflation," means as little as it would in any economy. Ah, normalcy.
4. "In a Modern World" - This has a Junior Boys...OH WAIT I MEAN TIMBALAND skitter thing going on. That's nice, dear. This is the most showtuney track of them all - you can practically smell the paint on the giant iPhone cardboard backdrop Spooner must be singing in front of. The lyrics are some goobledy gook about our ways in '09, but the thing is that I don't turn to Fischerspooner for my cultural reporting. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that.
It is now that I decide that if there's some kind of Luxx reopening or some shit to herald in this sadly unaborted revival, I'm going to attend it just so I can wear a T-shirt that says, "I'd Rather Be Masturbating," because seriously, I'd rather be masturbating.
5. "Supply and Demand" - Each synth jars. Each percussion line pushes it toward crunchy radio cheese. Each decision underwhelms.
6. "Amuse Bouche" - That title means something mouth. Possibly "amuse."
7. "Infidels of the World Unite" - I'm stopping this song midway through.
8. "Door Train Home" - Um, yeah. No. I’m done. I’m never going to like this shit. I don't see how anyone's going to dance to it, but maybe the point this late in the game is to just stand agog at how cool these guys are, so uh, you go ahead and do that and I'm going to masturbate.
And so, in sum: Can't talk. Masturbating.
After a few minutes, I proceed:
Peaches - I Feel Cream
Never liked her, always thought her music sucked (talk about chik-chik-chika cheap production!) but some dude from Simian Mobile Disco produced a lot of this, and so...
1. "Serpentine" - Early on, she says something like, "I come to dash, I’m electroclash / I paint my lash and outlast the pack." OMG, so she's thinking electroclash, too! We're practically twins. Except she has more facial hair than I do. She makes a reference to her beard and mustache, proving that there was at least one person that found this amusing (her). She says "pesca fresca" in obvious reference to her vagina. I'm not into that.
2. "Talk To Me" - This sounds like what I would think the Gossip would sound like if the only thing I knew about them was Beth Ditto's tits. Peaches sings on this. I didn't know she did that, and you know, she doesn't suck. Her singing voice is OK enough to make the amount she raps not OK. Seriously, for someone who sucks at rapping, she does it a hell of a lot.
3. "Lose You" - This song is fantastic, a weird space Italo thing that she just flutters her falsetto over. Seriously, why can't she do this all the time?
4. "More" - This sounds like a Dr. Luke production at its most caustic. I never thought there'd be anything to Peaches' commercial viability, but so far, this is the poppiest album of the bunch. And uh, I can't believe that there's a three-song stretch on a Peaches album that I enjoy thoroughly.
5. "Billionaire" - ...but see, now she's lost me with, "Take you to re-gina / Big trouble in little mangina." See how easy that was? Oh, and note to Yo Majesty's Shunda K: No one's going to take you seriously as a rapper if you never make serious hip-hop. True story.
6. "I Feel Cream" - More love. This sounds like a sharpened and beefed-up version of Madonna's "Get Together," but Peaches does euphoric and blissed-out better than Madonna ever could (probably since Madonna's too much of a control freak to be truly euphoric and blissed out, and she's a terrible actress). "Cream" is somewhat spoiled by the rapped bridge. I seriously think Gwen Stefani has more flow than Peaches. Trying to decide if she redeems herself with the following admittedly clever lines, though: "Play you like a Guitar Hero / Tolerance for no one, zero / Get you off like Robert Shapiro.”
7. "Trick or Treat" - "I drink a whiskey / You lick my crows feet..." Except, no I don't. I just press NEXT.
8. "Show Stopper" - Yeah, no to this, too. This song is screaming at me. I didn't sign up for that.
9. "Mommy Complex" - "Hush now baby, don’t you stress / I’m gonna fill your mommy complex." Wow! A new frontier of provocation. I'm gonna go out and buy some pearls just for the sake of clutching them to this!
10. "Mud" - I don't like how she says "drama" like "dramma."
12. "Take You On" - "I'll take you on / I'll take you on," she says repeatedly, like she's rehearsing her one line as a sitcom extra. When she gets around to, "Can my fist fit down your deep throat?" I'm outta here.
And so, in sum: Well, I certainly won't be masturbating again in my life, thanks to the imagery contained on this disc! Really, though, this woman is so capable of really good shit once she drops the shtick and stops fake-rapping. The good songs here sort of become infuriating when held up against the usual Peaches crap. It's like, if your tits are great and you can do tricks with them, why not focus on that instead of always pushing your crusty vag in our faces?
And now I'm on a roll!
Larry Tee - Club Badd
1. "Let's Make Nasty" - Christ, I'm sick of fake-rap. This track has a Baltimore-by-way-of-Crookers shuffle. Trendy and commercial! I detect bongos from Diana Ross' "The Boss," which is very Clivillés and Cole of Larry Tee.
2. "I Love U" - This song features a 7-year-old named Amita, who's billed as a "video star," although I could find no proof of that in the 10 seconds I just searched on YouTube. Anyway, I don't think that children should be invited in Larry Tee's house of sin.
3. "Agyness Deyn" - Pointing out how two years ago this song is becomes a cruel prospect when I get to the line, "She's the girl with the haircut!" Seriously, it'd be like making fun of a retarded child.
4. "My Penis" - This song features Perez Hilton tripping on some kind of fantasy in which, "Everybody wants a piece of my penis." Along with Larry's anono-stomp (that's a thumbnail sketch of his general approach to production), Perez says, "P to the E to the N to the I to the S. Suck it." This song blows so much that he's asking for a 69. No thanks! He also runs through some of the things he enjoys calling himself (does a nickname mean anything if you give it to yourself?): Perez, P-Nasty, Perezzle. One day, a very special narcissist will invest himself only in the art of naming himself. That will be his medium -- thinking of new things to call himself. When that day comes, we will have at last found someone more repugnant than Perez Hilton.
5. "Licky (Work It Out)" - Princess Superstar is on this. I bet she feels pretty dumb that Lady Gaga was able to come along, refine her shtick ever so slightly and become an actual princess superstar. Oops! At one point, I'm not sure if this is a song or a field recording of Larry Tee's colon. Best track yet.
(Have I mentioned how much I hate fake-rap, btw?)
6. "Hipster Girl" - The only thing I'm more sick of than fake rap is the examination of the hipster. Here’s a hint: the louder you resent hipsters, the more likely you are to be one. Bitching about or even noting hipsters is like masturbating because you missed when you were trying to navel gaze. Christopher Just did this remix, so I can’t really hate...Oh yes I can, because the guitars just came in and then people yelled “HIPSTER” everything went Republica. I’m not listening to this anymore, sorry.
7. "My Pussy" - Amanda Lepore saying “Pussy, my pussy,” greets me. I’m not listening to this anymore, sorry.
8. "Get Your Grind On" - You know, I have such disdain right now for this bland pounding house combined with irritating vocals that I wouldn’t get my grind on now out of principle. You can’t make me, Larry Tee. Also, I think people should be fined for yelling, "Acid!" when there's no discernible 303 action. It's like yelling, "Shark!" on a fin-free beach, but more poseurish.
9. "The Noughties" - There's a "People Are Still Having Sex" pounding techno kick thing going on. Oh lovely. "Go ahead do it, you can make a difference in the Noughties," says...someone. I think that kind of optimism is why crap like this gets made. "The opposition is going online!" we're told. I'm here to say: so is the opposition to the opposition.
10. "Louis Vuitton" - Jeffree Starr? So, was the goal to get every annoying person in history on one album? Where the fuck is Boxxy, then?
11. "Shoes" - Yeah, no Boxxy, but how's this for a viral video sensation? A house remix of Kelly's "Shoes." Oh, what novel fun is this! So this way when it's played you can say, "Hey! I remember that from two years ago!" This is for people who've always wanted to dance to an Internet video, but who found The History of Dance choreography too daunting.
12. & 13. Eh, skipping around.
14. "I Love U (Original)" - I'm not listening to this stupid kid again and in original from.
And so, in sum: Now that I've gotten this down on blog, I can remove this from my iPod. That feels like a triumph, although when my foot fell asleep and while I was listening to this and momentarily diverted my attention, it felt like a bigger triumph.
Chicks on Speed - Cutting the Edge
2. "Girl Monster" - No. No. No. They weren't electroclash anyway, right?
3. "Art Rules" - The synth stabs and beefy, post-Italo sound suggest that someone remembers Stock Aitken Waterman. What a memory! This song seems to rail against the art scene, although aren't Chicks on Speed self-styled artists? "Are you a nobody? Well die and get famous. Your own retrospective at just 33," goes one of the lines. Wow, what an incisive survey of the way things work! I never would have figured that out without this song.
5. "Vibrator" - Is that polka?
7. "Buzz" - Scanning through snotty/nasal singing...
9. "Globo Cop" - I'm just going to post this song and that should be sufficient explanation as to why subjecting myself to this any further would be actually hateful. Sorry guys, but I kinda love myself too much to finish out this disc, much less get into the next one.
And so, in sum: Really and truly one of the snottiest and ugliest things I've ever had the displeasure of listening to half of. If the endurance test would have started here, it never would have finished.
Because, really, it took me over a week to get to the final entry...
Tiga - Ciao!
Even though I'd listened to this album (and enjoyed it immensely) a few times prior to this masochistic challenge I endured, I was unwilling to go back to it because of the deteriorating nature of my listening experience. I once again enlisted it as a running companion, and wow. Just wow. This album isn't just good for being the least terrible of all of the albums in this group, it's just a good record. Tiga always seemed so obvious to me (his biggest electroclash hit was a cover of "Sunglasses at Night," need I say more?), but here the quirk runs thick and the references wink instead of hitting you over the head. "Luxury" vaguely recalls Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence," "Turn the Night On" splits its time between David Bowie's "Modern Love" and Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out," and "Overtime," much like Jamie Principle's "Your Love" seduces you with its track for a good three minutes before the vocals finally kick in.
And speaking of that, a lot of what's here falls somewhere between tracks and songs. Much of the material contains mere chants from Tiga, jingles instead of full-blown verses and choruses, and so it exists in a strange but becoming space. The result is sounds like a pop album without compromise. Others snort, but Tiga's too busy having his cake and eating it, too.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention "Love Don't Dance Here Anymore" (again, a slight reference to Rose Royce is all you get), a 10-minute epic electro-disco track that comes replete with a solo-piano intro. It's gorgeous stuff, transcending electroclash and any genre, really. I never, ever would have expecting something so great to result from anyone associated with electroclash, but maybe Tiga never deserved that designation in the first place. Maybe he just needed all these years to become actually good. This is the one album of the group that doesn't feel like a reliving of the glory days. It seems that time has been impossibly kind to him.
Not sure if it's relevant, but the Fischerspooner, Peaches, Tiga, and Chicks On Speed all leaked way ahead of street date. I mean, everything leaks now, but these were way ahead of schedule and on pretty insular labels (COS is on their own label!). Intentional? Creating buzz for the next wave of Electroclash? Hmmm....
Tiga, Ciao! Web leak 04/16, Official street date 05/26.
Peaches, “I Feel Cream,” Web leak on 4/8; Official street date 5/4.
Chicks On Speed, Cutting The Edge, Web release 5/11, Official street date 6/2.
PS - Keeping up with leaked albums is part of what I do for work.
Posted by: John R | June 08, 2009 at 01:39 PM
yeah i agree about peaches, she's capable of great things but just wont go there...
Posted by: Jonathan | June 08, 2009 at 02:19 PM
Thank you for enduring that so we don't have to.
All of your observations are spot on.
I want to like Fischerspooner but they have never lived up to the hype.
I've often felt the problem with Electroclash it's all fashion. These are people who want to be famous and have their 15 minutes it has nothing to do with the music, I think the music is an afterthought.
Posted by: pj | June 08, 2009 at 03:14 PM
I love that you gave Luxx a shout out. I miss that place.
Posted by: gogo | June 08, 2009 at 04:41 PM
I think the new Peaches album is spectacular. Sure, her insolent rapping can be grating from time-to-time, but "Mommy Complex" and "I Feel Cream" are two of my favourite songs of the year.
The rest of those albums really do suck, though.
Posted by: Darren | June 08, 2009 at 06:40 PM
Aw, sadness, I actually kinda liked Fischerspooner, Peaches, and Tiga a few years back. My sister saw Fischerspooner in St. Louis a couple weeks ago and thought the music was just ok; I do think with them you have to accept that what they are trying to do is about more than just the music, there's a performance art aspect there.
Posted by: Al | June 08, 2009 at 06:46 PM
If you go back and read the music press from 2002, they'd have you believing that electroclash actually happened. Even the arguably "authentic" retro rock thing was neither enduring nor popular. Lady Gaga is interesting (though barely tolerable) as a pop star because her rhetoric is esoteric and post-modern, while her music is very conventional. Has it been noted yet what percentage of the people who own her album are aware of her persona? Pop culture fans on the internet are a very bad focus group for media interest.
I don't know what this comment is about.
Posted by: hi | June 08, 2009 at 10:36 PM
Who gives a fuck about Lady GaGa?
She's been told to take her shtick one step beyond because Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are so 10 years ago, but her music's the same shit, or worse.
Posted by: mightyundies | June 08, 2009 at 11:20 PM
if you said electroclash that many times in real life i'd have to hit yr face.
Posted by: yr momz | June 08, 2009 at 11:25 PM
Odd. As much as I LOVE "Fuck the Pain Away," I cannot stand the rest of Peaches' music.
Posted by: Chantal Goya | June 09, 2009 at 12:41 AM
Thanks for the shout out to masturbating. If there is anything better than reference-filled, name dropping blogging about reference-filled, name dropping music, it is masturbating.
Posted by: kolimpah | June 09, 2009 at 09:09 AM
Man, my first thought when I heard "I feel cream" was Madonna's "get together". Which is funny because Peaches has bashed Madonna more than once.
And then she churns out a Madonna song. Not just any song but one of Madonna's singles.
How embarrassing.
Posted by: Francesco | June 09, 2009 at 10:54 AM
Fuck Waterboarding, this shit sounds like real torture. I mean...listening to Perez talk/sing about himself and his penis?!? Hell to the no.
Posted by: Wookie | June 10, 2009 at 05:01 AM
The only one i liked was Peaches' latest but truly detested listening to Tiga's Ciao! even with Jake Shears in it (maybe the collaboration with Gonzales is tolerable). The rest was pure dreck.
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Posted by: ellie | June 10, 2009 at 08:40 PM
This post is EPIC!
I'm kind of wondering if Adam Lambert is going to go towards electroclash, he's certainly hinted at it and some of his old stuff is leaning towards it.
I can only stand it in very minute quantities, like 2 minute intervals, though I did here Beyonce's Diva in an electroclash arrangement and loved it. And I can barely stand Beyonce.
Posted by: StickyKeys | June 11, 2009 at 08:51 AM
oh no i have to disagree with you on Peaches! I think "I Feel Cream" is not only her best record to date hands down, but one of the best of the year.
"staring at my ass and my beard and my mustache"? Yes, yes I am.
Posted by: Slacker Chic | June 12, 2009 at 01:21 PM
I could never stand Fischerspooner. Whenever their songs came on I would have to step outside. I hope this last album is the final nail in their coffin.
Posted by: apesofmath | June 16, 2009 at 03:48 PM
The first half of Tiga is a little reminiscent of 2003, but you are super correct on how awesome the latter half is. I almost picked up his cd a day or two before reading your review, but didn't. Then reading your recap of him it persuaded me to get it. I'm in love with it.
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