Badpuppy Gay Today |
Tuesday, 02 September 1997 |
Chris Cochrane's album cover gives thanks to "all dyke and fag rockers" thus self-consciously attempting to find a rugged place in the frantic, nihilistic, nowheresville of melody-trashing, lyric-bashing adolescent anxiousness and dumbassed discordant dissociation at its ugliest and worst. The cover itself is mucho ugly. The colors are ugly, and the cover's interior photo is ugly, showing, for all who may care, a bearded, balding man licking what appears to be his own hairless armpit, or perhaps, a small rise that purports to be a bicep. A poor man's bicep. If such symbols attract listeners to Cochrane's music, they just may enjoy listening to the CD's lovely songs including Urinal, Dead Beat, Simple, or Amnesia. Amnesia, in fact, is exactly what this reviewer longed for after having to endure the--what shall we call it?--(why not use the first cut's name) Unthinkable. In All of a Sudden, Cochrane sings: "he wouldn't--kiss me it was too dirty for him it was too dirty but he stayed..." Whoever "he" was, his reaction, based on the spirit of these songs, was reasonable, no, brilliant, and one can only assume that he stayed because he had no place else to go. If Cochrane kisses like he sings, he needs a sex therapist. |
Urinal introduces listeners to a focus that surely delights the demented: "Like smelling like piss like smelling like a urinal." Now there are some fabulous fag lyrics, eh? Helpful, especially to the all-too-suicidal young at whom this convention-defying blithering is aimed like a turd-tipped arrow. Many of the album's smelliest lyrics drip with question-mark ambiguity. If this is the odor of youthful rebellion, it is a rebellion that does not suck pretty. It sucks poorly. Chris Cochrane accompanies his own "voice" with guitar, sampler, and organ. Dom Richards operates bass and slide bass. Ed Ware is drums and percussion and Dudley Saunders both "sings" and plays guitar on the last cut, Jesus. Hearing that last cut, one is moved to breathe deeply, echoing: Jesus! Sing Pretty? Forget it. Just suck. At the bottom of the "thank you's" there's an almost indecipherable tribute the homo core scene, and to "joy and dave ware for their continued love and support." Joy? Hardly. Love? On this album it is programmed to sink in crass mismanagement. Masochists for Music are encouraged to order Suck Pretty from Knitting Factory Works, 74 Leonard Street, New York, New York 10013. Cochrane is on some other too, listed, for your dis-edification at www.knittingfactory.com |
© 1997 BEI;
All Rights Reserved. |
