Album review from Tangents, March 2006
1st of September 2006, 1:42 pm
Carrion Camping
If you're one that always needs some kind of redeeming musical style to enjoy your aural art, then you'd be hard pressed to find any empathy with The Vichy Government. Bitter and irreverent iconoclast Jamie Manners stands in front of his pal's grim electronic backdrops with an austere malevolence, and takes to his music with an anti-social lust that sees the lone Casio keyboard take on bleak minimalists' symbolic effect. Manners even seems to begrudge the spartan staccato the Casio does manage to churn out in synch with a hampered drum machine, the pal for his part pounding it like a spiteful kid wilfully spurning his mate's new guitar on Christmas day.
Their shtick apparent from the very start, it's left to Manners' monologues to weave a relationship with your head, the profundity of which only becomes apparent when penetrating the innermost heart of his apparently snide demeanour. A Shankil, Belfast-raised, Cambridge-educated and acutely perceptive young man, Manners waxes lyrical on issues from celebrity culture to Northern Ireland, hitting the mark to a lesser extent with his cross-cultural witticisms of secondary experience than with a genuine, passionate individual rebellion against his homeland's doctrines. Although in tracks like 'Arranged Marriages', musings like "'but, if they stuck me in some dodgy blokes' harem, with an ink dot on my forehead and a sapphire on my navel, I'd let the eunuchs pail me up, and initiate the other girls, and with my husband decided it was my lucky night, I'd spit in his face and unleash my claws (although, maybe he'd enjoy that')" ' typical of Manners always corrosive and biting penmanship ' have an undoubtedly thrilling quality of irreverence, the parts where I really love this band are during songs like 'Who Makes the Calibans' and 'Orange Disorder', where Manners' voice is heard at its most solemnly individualistic and soulfully defiant.
In these overt, first-hand attacks on Northern Irish cultural indoctrination, Manners''embittered demeanour and lyricism truly cuts. "You said you'd make me stand upright, but all you did was teach me vice / The island wasn't spoiled before you turned up with ideas and guns, now there's a Macdonalds on every corner, selling turds in buns", is the highlight of the heartfelt diatribe in 'Who Makes the Calibans', 'Orange Disorder' featuring the nigh on heroic riposte of "Some inbred piece of shit in a bowler hat and white gloves waves a pamphlet in my face and tells me 'This is your culture' / Fuck you ' I know my culture / It's Roxy Music, Billy Liar, Brass Eye, Celine' / It's not a charade of viscous brats marching down our street and making that parochial din on tin whistles and Lambeg drums ' and burning cars in the name of freedom fighting / And it's not turning scum like Bobby Sands into plasticine saints".
At their best The Vichy Government are a band whose angrily informed message leaves a lump in your throat, at all times one with whom you'd ultra-proudly spike a mainstream event. Carrion Camping does everything it sets out to do with minimalist precision and utmost rebellious soul. How cataclysmically good it'd be if it imploded at the end like Inspector Gadget's self-destructing message'
Their shtick apparent from the very start, it's left to Manners' monologues to weave a relationship with your head, the profundity of which only becomes apparent when penetrating the innermost heart of his apparently snide demeanour. A Shankil, Belfast-raised, Cambridge-educated and acutely perceptive young man, Manners waxes lyrical on issues from celebrity culture to Northern Ireland, hitting the mark to a lesser extent with his cross-cultural witticisms of secondary experience than with a genuine, passionate individual rebellion against his homeland's doctrines. Although in tracks like 'Arranged Marriages', musings like "'but, if they stuck me in some dodgy blokes' harem, with an ink dot on my forehead and a sapphire on my navel, I'd let the eunuchs pail me up, and initiate the other girls, and with my husband decided it was my lucky night, I'd spit in his face and unleash my claws (although, maybe he'd enjoy that')" ' typical of Manners always corrosive and biting penmanship ' have an undoubtedly thrilling quality of irreverence, the parts where I really love this band are during songs like 'Who Makes the Calibans' and 'Orange Disorder', where Manners' voice is heard at its most solemnly individualistic and soulfully defiant.
In these overt, first-hand attacks on Northern Irish cultural indoctrination, Manners''embittered demeanour and lyricism truly cuts. "You said you'd make me stand upright, but all you did was teach me vice / The island wasn't spoiled before you turned up with ideas and guns, now there's a Macdonalds on every corner, selling turds in buns", is the highlight of the heartfelt diatribe in 'Who Makes the Calibans', 'Orange Disorder' featuring the nigh on heroic riposte of "Some inbred piece of shit in a bowler hat and white gloves waves a pamphlet in my face and tells me 'This is your culture' / Fuck you ' I know my culture / It's Roxy Music, Billy Liar, Brass Eye, Celine' / It's not a charade of viscous brats marching down our street and making that parochial din on tin whistles and Lambeg drums ' and burning cars in the name of freedom fighting / And it's not turning scum like Bobby Sands into plasticine saints".
At their best The Vichy Government are a band whose angrily informed message leaves a lump in your throat, at all times one with whom you'd ultra-proudly spike a mainstream event. Carrion Camping does everything it sets out to do with minimalist precision and utmost rebellious soul. How cataclysmically good it'd be if it imploded at the end like Inspector Gadget's self-destructing message'