Kategorie: CD-Reviews | Genre: Artpop/Pop | Heft: Jahrgang 2014, eclipsed Nr. 162 / 7-8-2014 | VÖ-Jahr: 2014 | Wertung: 8.5/10 | Label: Cherry Red | Autor: SaS
At the beginning there is a bitter parody of the Velvet underground song "Candy Says": "Alan Vega Says" describes how the suicide front man supposedly approaches songwriting, and the cynic of British pop, Luke Haines, doesn't leave good hair on him. Neither is Lou Reed, the New York Dolls or the underground poet Jim Carroll. Or is "New York In The '70s" more about the transfiguration of a pop-cultural scene, a transfiguration that Haines emphasizes in his songs as superficial and striking? It's Haines' standard procedure: By repetitively mentioning names, bands, or places, he wants to show that pop history is all about representation, surface, and that no one takes the trouble to look behind the façade. So he kidnaps us into a scene populated by "frightening transvestites", in which you just go downtown with Jim Carroll (and feel like this is mentioned fifty times in a row) or experience a "New York City Breakdown". The summit of the whole thing is the track "Lou Reed Lou Reed", which consists only of the words "Lou Reed" except for a short intermezzo describing the appearance of the star in the seventies. Brilliant.
Top track: Cerne Abbus Man
