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 Disco
Inferno
David
Byrne and Fatboy Slim
Here
Lies Love
And
by popular demand, David Byrne teams up with Fatboy Slim for
a concept double album about Imelda Marcos. Is there anyone
who didn’t see that coming?
But seriously, for a project as improbable as this, with such
potential for esoteric flights of fancy, this is eminently
accessible stuff. Mostly, it’s gently updated disco, reflecting
Marcos’ taste for the Studio 54 lifestyle. A heady roster
of guest vocalists (including Cyndi Lauper, Tori Amos and
Sharon Jones) belt out a series of first- person observations
in the voices of Marcos and the obscure figure Estrella Cumpas,
a woman Marcos’ family employed during her childhood.
The music here may not be visionary, but much of it is still
delicious. Fatboy Slim’s hand weighs heavily on the addictive
electro-stomper “Eleven Days.” With its needling, township
guitar riff, high-strung Byrne vocals and references to 50
Cent and reality television, the great “American Troglodyte”
sounds the most like what you might expect from “the new David
Byrne album.”
The snaking tropical rhythms of “Every Drop of Rain” and “How
Are You” are totally danceable, but sound like genre experiments
that Fatboy Slim, author of era-defining Big Beat ear candy
like “The Rockafeller Skank” and “Praise You,” could program
in his sleep.
This really is a partially finished project. Byrne states
in the liner notes he envisioned it as a theatrical presentation
to happen in dance clubs; as he told NPR, “that never happened.”
(New York City’s Public Theater reportedly is considering
turning it into a musical.) The narrative, such as it is,
fizzles out once Marcos becomes a globetrotting disco-monarch;
the two-disc cycle features exactly one song specifically
about the crimes of the Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos regime.
And we never actually find out what happens to Cum pas. In
light of the shortcomings of its conceptual framework, the
fun-but-safe music—all 90 minutes of it—seems of less moment.
The glorious disco of “Don’t You Agree?” depicts Marcos in
campaign mode for her husband. “Sometimes you need a strongman/When
things are out of control,” Róisín Murphy sings, sailing over
an irresistible groove buffeted by sun-baked electric piano
riffs and a touch of horns. Dictatorship never sounded so
good.
—Jeremy
D. Goodwin
 The
Red Krayola with Art & Language
Five
American Portraits
Mayo
Thompson, with his Red Krayola and its various extended ensemble
formats, has managed to remain an artist creating music over
the course of four decades. Never a part of the robust business
side of the music industry, Red Krayola has recorded intermittently,
and for a small but fervent audience. Whether or not by design,
this has left Thompson and his cohorts free to explore. Five
American Portraits offers up musical tributes to Wile E. Coyote,
George W. Bush,
Jimmy
Carter, John Wayne and Ad Reinhardt. There’s a simple, sing-song
quality to the melodies, all of which support lyrics that
are straightforwardly precise descriptions of each of the
five subjects (“A crease from the right corner of the mouth,”
“Light reflected in the iris of the left eye,” “Some loose
skin below the right eyelid,” “The left side of the nose immediately
above the nostril”). The portraits are further defined with
musical passages from folk, 20th Century idioms and the classical
canon braided into each.
In a gentle way, Five American Portraits makes its idiosyncratic
identity unshakably present. Erasing everything but descriptions
of their common physical characteristics makes for a compelling
sociopolitical statement. Bravo, Art! Bravo, Language! Bravo,
Red Krayola!
—David
Greenberger
 Xiu
Xiu
Dear
God, I Hate Myself
The
cool kids like Xiu Xiu because of their experimental tendencies—mixing
synthpop, alternative percussion, odd instrumentation, dissonance
and deviant sexual themes. The rest of us like them because
of their big nasty percussion and irresistibly dark, yet uplifting,
choruses. If you aren’t sure which category you fit in to
here, just answer these two simple questions: 1. Have you
put Morrissey’s “Bigmouth Strikes Again” on more than one
mix tape or iPod mix? 2. Do you ever get teary-eyed imagining
a world where Ian Curtis didn’t turn Joy Division into New
Order with a rope?
If
you answered yes to either of these questions, you should
do yourself a favor and acquire a copy of Dear God, I Hate
Myself.
This isn’t some cheap, embarrassing ’80s goth fix along the
lines of She Wants Revenge or (shudder) the Bravery—this is
a quirky, art-damaged mess of an album punctuated by chirping
samples, broken keyboards and cheeky, self-deprecating choruses
that sound and feel a lot like “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and
“Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want.” There are
nasty noise mistakes mashed into lyrics about sadomasochism
and eating chocolate.
Jamie Stewart—the man who has functioned as Xiu Xiu, along
with a rotating cast of characters, since the mid-’90s—has
that kind of jubilant self-loathing that will put a smile
on the face of any neurotic goth-leaning music snob. But it
will also likely work on those state-working soccer moms looking
for a dark trip back to their days haunting QE2.
Stewart’s voice might be the only thing here that trips anyone
up—it’s the goth rasping, I’m-trying-super-hard-to-be- dramatic
twinge that could drive away those not versed in proper synthpop
frontman stylings. It probably won’t help the squeamish that
Stewart dumps the hamper of all the sordid details of his
bisexual relationships into the laps of listeners—broken hearts,
nasty sex and abuse like he’s just doing his laundry.
But don’t let that scare you. The title track makes you ache
in glee as Stewart admits, “Despair will hold a place in my
heart/A bigger one that you do/And I will always be nicer
to the cat/Than I am to you,” before making the titular declaration
over trumpeting, glorious synths. It’s a misanthrope’s anthem,
the kind that has never been delivered in such triumphant
fashion.
Even the sleeper tracks on the album (like “House Sparrow”)
creep up on you with lush ambient tones, lulling you into
happy complacency until Stewart slowly ramps up into full-on
anxious, paranoid pleading about fucked-up relationships,
“Christian schools,” and “a serial will to kill.” It almost
makes you feel a little bit violated, but it’s better not
to think about it—just let it happen. Dear God, I Hate Myself
is the good kind of bad touch.
—David
King
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