Album review from Robots & Electronic Brains, March 2006
25th of April 2006, 5:36 pm
Carrion Camping/Whores In Taxis
First album first lines. The Beastie Boys got it right for a young Possession on Licenced to Ill: "Because mutiny on the Bounty's what we're all about." Pointless rebellion, getting pissed and being mates with Run DMC. Ten or so years later, SMASH's Self Abused put his carefree student life in into perspective with angry, claw-handed guitars and angrier words: "Back to where my friend died, not to the scene of his ugly suicide."
Another decade further on and The Vichy Government are here with a couple of albums from the cynical side of the street. The Possession who now resides in the world of work, not renowned for his optimism, for whom the glass is neither half empty nor half full but certain to be knocked over before he can drink out of it, finds it suits today's mood.
As first lines go, "All language is fascist and so am I" just about trumps any other and reflects the media, and the complicity with which it engages its subjects, perfectly. I Control Discourse ends abruptly with the words "I Am God" just under a couple of minutes later. In that time a monologue on the symbols, syntax and semiotics of propaganda and manipulation rips past, closely followed by a horribly addictive horrible screeching in lieu of a synth riff and a beat from page one of the manual.
"Protestants are not sexy." Barely pausing for breath, theirs or ours, they race into The Protestant Work Ethic II. Politically scathing, simultaneously distant and too close, ironic, clever, arch, basic. Soft Cell, if Oscar Wilde had been Gene Pitney. If Marc Almond hadn't begun to try to sing. If he could have looked outwards not inwards. If it had been Belfast, not Blackpool. If Dave Ball had made his music even less complex. More intense.
There isn't a Sex Dwarf on Carrion Camping. Or a Tainted Love. There is a track called Arranged Marriage and one called Orange Disorder that begins "Fuck You, Northern Ireland." Make Love to the Camera is delivered as if there's a turd taped to the mic, disgust and loathing to the fore: "Seduce your target audience/ Stop complaining/ You'll get your gram of coke/ And a lollipop/ Now there's a good girl." The modern music business in a moment.
That world-weary older Possession listened to Carrion Camping once and ordered Whores In Taxis. He wasn't disappointed. Life Should Mean Life simultaneously appeals on a superficial level to its targets, readers of The Daily Mail or The Sun and other blinkered voyeurs, while spearing them for their apathy and troglodyte logic. Society, or the stupid portions of it, is on the receiving end again as the knife is stuck into plastic surgery on The Immortals. Plastic surgery and society's gullibility and a dash of bile ends with a glorious couplet: "The silicone melts and.. drips out of their arse."
You wouldn't like to live under The Vichy Government but round here they rule.
Another decade further on and The Vichy Government are here with a couple of albums from the cynical side of the street. The Possession who now resides in the world of work, not renowned for his optimism, for whom the glass is neither half empty nor half full but certain to be knocked over before he can drink out of it, finds it suits today's mood.
As first lines go, "All language is fascist and so am I" just about trumps any other and reflects the media, and the complicity with which it engages its subjects, perfectly. I Control Discourse ends abruptly with the words "I Am God" just under a couple of minutes later. In that time a monologue on the symbols, syntax and semiotics of propaganda and manipulation rips past, closely followed by a horribly addictive horrible screeching in lieu of a synth riff and a beat from page one of the manual.
"Protestants are not sexy." Barely pausing for breath, theirs or ours, they race into The Protestant Work Ethic II. Politically scathing, simultaneously distant and too close, ironic, clever, arch, basic. Soft Cell, if Oscar Wilde had been Gene Pitney. If Marc Almond hadn't begun to try to sing. If he could have looked outwards not inwards. If it had been Belfast, not Blackpool. If Dave Ball had made his music even less complex. More intense.
There isn't a Sex Dwarf on Carrion Camping. Or a Tainted Love. There is a track called Arranged Marriage and one called Orange Disorder that begins "Fuck You, Northern Ireland." Make Love to the Camera is delivered as if there's a turd taped to the mic, disgust and loathing to the fore: "Seduce your target audience/ Stop complaining/ You'll get your gram of coke/ And a lollipop/ Now there's a good girl." The modern music business in a moment.
That world-weary older Possession listened to Carrion Camping once and ordered Whores In Taxis. He wasn't disappointed. Life Should Mean Life simultaneously appeals on a superficial level to its targets, readers of The Daily Mail or The Sun and other blinkered voyeurs, while spearing them for their apathy and troglodyte logic. Society, or the stupid portions of it, is on the receiving end again as the knife is stuck into plastic surgery on The Immortals. Plastic surgery and society's gullibility and a dash of bile ends with a glorious couplet: "The silicone melts and.. drips out of their arse."
You wouldn't like to live under The Vichy Government but round here they rule.