On their debut longplayer, glam-rock-galloping Sheffield-based shine-up Pink
Grease break from their strutting stride and self-conscious salacious
sleaziness to take an unlikely trip through the imagery of Haruki Murakami's
sprawling novel The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, paying tribute to
the subtle Japanese genius over a song (called "Wind Up Bird," yes) that's
much more raw in the rock 'n' roll pants than their normal tightly-trouser'd
tributes to the flamboyant heroes of their TOTP'd youth. An almost Gun-Club-ish
gait prevails as Rory Lewarne sings of missing cats, days spent down
wells, and a wind-up bird whose morning call, sounding in the narrator's
nowhere, seems to turn the earth. From Murakami, Pink Grease take the
illogical step of paying tribute, next up, to Peaches, the following
song called, uh, well, "Peaches"; the story therein recalls how the sexually
aggressive Canadian elecktro queen turn'd the band's hearts to stone
through "cold desire." Pink Grease, in all their glam-rocking fantasia,
have indeed played shows with the only Peach with the hole in the middle,
but her inspiration seems more marked on the following song, where the
lovelorned "Peaches" — with its chugging riff, handclaps, and faux-theremin
solo — gives way to "The Nasty Show," which finds a blunt drum-machine
beat beating blankly whilst clamorous rock-guitars and flaming horn-honk
wail away, Lewarne warming to the right licentious lyricism as he howls: "I
wanna fucking die for you/ I wanna die fucking you/ I'm fucking the day
away/ Why don't you come over and play?" The concept of a sprawling,
shambolic, shitfaced six-piece glam-rock band strapping on the girlie-show
shenanigans of the Peaches crew, matching it with stumbling synth-punk
shenanigans, and firing up six-string-slinging evocations of smacked-out
rock 'n' rollers from the New York Dolls through Royal Trux must surely
sound like some sort of fun, but such an equation feels a little bit
contrived, at times, an elaborate game of dress-ups unleashed under the
unlikely title This Is for Real — a claim which, if not deliberately
ironic, sure seems the complete opposite of the fabricated fashion-conscious
compilation-of-quotations that the album actually is. I mean, sure, Pink
Grease are more 4REAL than the Manic Street Preachers (who always sounded
like a polite British version of Guns N' Roses to me), but all their
appropriations of various rock-moves seem like so many struck poses,
a vogue-ing through the stage acts of enthusiasts from days gone by,
a deliberate, didactic attempt at "bringing the fun back into rock music." Of
course, to some that tired old song'll surely sound like the freshest
of sentimental sentiments, and, thus, in a world currently doing nostalgic
backflips for Scissor Sisters and The Darkness, it's easy to imagine
Pink Grease piggybacking English-wank-rag hype and hyperbole to princely
popularity.
|
