Fresh, irreverent, inventive, multilingual, hip and young. Punk and pop and a bit of party style bouncing around.
So it could be The Sugarcubes. Or Altered Images.
But for god's sake, it’s 2006 so it has to be LADYFUZZ. They are posing the question "how much art and craft and professional dedication is it worth pouring into platinum coated disposo-pop?"
The answer, I think will depend entirely on age group and life style. There's always a strong demand for toy shop colours and knowingly naïve Crayola stylings among the most intelligent (and vulnerable) late teens and early twenties setting up their own homes. Just check the display racks in the University card shop.
Right in amongst this thin but precious sliver of pop demographics LADYFUZZ will tear themselves a great slice of enthusiastic and excited dedication. There is a considerable amount of mannered styling going on here, but the ensuing noises are definitely worth the occasionally glimpsed sight of planned self-creation going on in the background. It’s a good noise.
Austrian born Liz Neumayr sings, yelps and hyperventilates her emotional rushes in a hundred directions at once, as assured and as maddening as any self absorbed artist can be. The general plan is simple. A disco-ish beat, a stuttering guitar line and dance oriented bass playing accompany off the wall tunes and songs that sometimes hit the spot and sometimes splatter the wall behind it.
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Either way the results merit a listen or two and guarantee serious enthusiasm from many corners of the room. Opener "Hold Up" exchanges Bow Wow Wow verses with Blondie choruses and is all the better for it. Actually the chorus is a killer. "There's A Woman In Studio One" has some gloopy squirts of saxophone that are lots of fun. "Something About A Dog" is much less stupid than it’s title and "Staple Gun" puts some clever vocalisations together in neat ways.
The general sense I get is that the parts are the most interesting feature of this album. Everything bobs up as a riff, a stab or a drop in. What they drop into is sometimes a bit thin, but the sense of adventure and excited experimenting is always there.
The "hidden" track is (as so often) a pointless addition that has a couple of ideas that didn’t really work and don’t really fit together. Which leaves us with 10 tracks and 32 minutes or so. After that I think much more of this giddy swerving about would make anyone queasy.
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