The Vichy Government - Album review from Plan B, December 2005

The trouble with the Vichy Government is that they know too much. Like the monk that Zarathustra encounters on the edge of the forest, they watch the world so attentively that their spirit is reduced to nearly nothingness. Actually, we made that last bit up ' there is no monk ' but the point is that the Vichy Government have attained such profound levels of cynical insight into the darkness that lies at the heart of pop music that the only thing they can in the end produce is a daft, excruciatingly dry, painfully minimal Casio pop. On top of these repetitive kiddie organ riffs, the Vichy Government lay some of the most poignant, funny lyrics that we have heard in a long time. Spiky synth and bare bones beatbox tracks about the male gaze, surgically attained immortality and classical history form a kind of astute arsenic karaoke. Verbose geeks are unlikely to ever be considered cool, since cool people are the ones that say the least. But their sci-fi prophesies and social critique put to shame any claims a certain libertine has made to writing anything approaching poetry.
-Pil & Galia Kollectiv