Two nice things had already happened as I started work on this review.
Firstly I decided to dump Windows Office and start using Open Office for all my music writing needs. Secondly, when I tried, experimentally, to buy blah blah tin's very enjoyable CD release through Amazon I was met with the dumb but unwittingly honest response: "Your search "blah tin commercial radar indifferent" did not match any products".
Products! One would hope not.
The music, on the other hand, is free to download from last.fm. All eleven tracks. The pithy sleeve notes that might make real purchasing worthwhile are also on last.fm. They make it clear that the purchase price accurately reflects the production costs.
Which leaves me, your redundant reviewer, very little to do but invite you to cut and paste the url below and get listening.
What you will hear is deft, minimalist craftwork on drum machine, antiquated keyboards, sampler, guitar, bass and cheap tricks (including a juicer) with a voice or two. It's acerbic, perky and surprisingly tuneful. The Mark E. Smith school of sneering is honoured in full and respectful measure but the lyrical turn has less of the despairing individualism and a little more of the collective aspiration for brief relent (if no better can be achieved). The withering of age and paid employment are referred, if not deferred, to.
My advice would be to start with tunes - like the sweet keyboard lines to be found in the OFSTED flailing "bureaucrat method" or the Joy Division glory of "your heart" (a love song). Note, in passing, the pop accessibility of "konstructionburo". Then move onto the dry tinder of potentially incendiary words that tell it like it shouldn't be. The combination of cynicism, tenderness and mordant critique is potent stuff. A lot of it is indirect, as befits three fairly decent coves who aren't looking to offend too early in the contest for your mind (if you are still possessed of such).
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You will find your own favourites, lightly done, but designed to linger. I especially liked the lines in "march aktion"
"We'll build museums, we'll put things in 'em / Everybody start making a list! / We'll build museums, the kids will see 'em! / "Free of charge!" they'll say, incredulous." And "I believe in a radiant future! / Don't You?", all sung to a relentlessly jovial tune.
"Language lab" has the spluttering rage of "Can you picture me, can you picture me, / in a semi-d, playing Pictionary / a fully paid up member, paid up member / of the Dinner ... Party?". Self loathing indeed.
At the very end "Honestly" stays wordless, with dramatic emotional sweep in the keyboard and guitar intro. It, leaves us with rueful contemplation and a gentle nudge to suggest, maybe, we have got choices and we can still find pleasure in simple things.
www.last.fm/music/blah+blah+tin
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