Art Brut, Bang Bang Rock & Roll
A party at the crossroads of art and artifice.
Pop music loves to look in the mirror — and Art Brut are one of the only current British bands willing to make faces in it. Their absurdly self-referential, unapologetically catchy debut, Bang Bang Rock and Roll, anticipated how much the Coldplay nation needed a piss-take, and now spearhead the backlash against pompous sincerity just like their spiritual granddad Johnny Rotten in punk's first generation.
Breakthrough single "Formed a Band" is their manifesto. "Look at us!" it asks, mocking (and begging for) fly-by-night NME celebrity. When you do look, you'll see that their awkward leader Eddie Argos, who resembles a deflated Robert Smith, is an odd cover boy indeed. Argos doesn't sing so much as hurl his lyrics, expounding on new girls, exes, little brothers, flatulence and delusions of deportation over an enthusiastic bare-bones punk sound a la the Fall or Alternative TV. Like Mark E. Smith or Mark Perry, Argos is best at wry sarcasm, as on the title cut. "I can't stand the sound of the Velvet Underground/ I can't stand that sound the second time around," he snarls while backups scream "White Light! White Heat!" over a hair metal boogie. He then demands "No more songs about sex, and drugs and rock & roll — it's booorrring," recalling the quip of the ’80s British sitcom The Young Ones as the conversation-stopping answer to the media's rock return hype. Of course, the media loves nothing more than being slagged, and so pop's perfect circle goes unbroken.
