Well here's a little musical diamond a friend from Glasgow just
sent me. It's called Quelle Horreur and it's by a San
Francisco/Brussels band called Mon Cousin Belge. For those who
flunked High School French, it means My Belgian Cousin. I don't
know if it's just schtic they employ, no matter, what we have
here is a truly remarkable cd that the world needs to know about.
I didn't completely understand the artwork. The cover features a
bandaged and puffy faced creature I presume to be the front man,
and inside, a marvelously giant, silver flecked mono-chromatic
poster with the same swollen mug bandaged and gaping out. An
assault of musical styles follows on the recording. The cd opens
with a call for redemption, a Sunday morning organ accompanying
one of the most exciting singing voices I've heard on any
recording in many years. If you think Antony and The Johnsons is
something strange and special, then you really need to hear this
Belgian weirdo sing! This is hard core singing folks...Mahalia
Jackson gone bad...Bessie Smith bleeding out in a hospital E.R.
Then there are choice nuggets like the agitprop stylings of The
Ugly American, unrelenting in its own self-hatred and
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aggrandizing spirit. A little Jarvis Cocker struts, without all
the primping and posturing. There's plenty of pop candy as well.
Stand out tracks; Pig Dog, Unicycle and Bundle of Contradictions
trill with Pixie-esque abandon. Then there is the super odd
diptych Sodomy/Lola. Where Sodomy laments the loss of love,
exulting immediately and resoundingly its freedom of not being
tied down, Lola just doesn't give a shit altogether. It does
exactly what it wants, which is dazzling and miraculous. There
is a killer segue between these two songs that would give Prince
himself a right proper stonner, the singer, credited only as
Emile, reaching heights that would require no small amount of
penile excavation afterward. Quelle Horreur is put out by a San
Francisco label called World Famous in San Francisco. Well I
hope San Francisco is willing to share, as soon, no doubt, the
world over will lay claim to the arrival of this fabulous and
deliriously strange cd.
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