Word: punk
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...summation of everything a band sets out to be. In the case of a band christened with the most illustrious of expletives, the connotations surrounding "Fuck" are particularly strong. Ask anyone to predict the band's style, and the answers will most likely be pretty similar. Death-metal. Angry punk-rock punctuated with chaotic background crashing and thrashing. Grating shrieks of hormone-infused, garage-ridden, guitar-laden pre-pubescents. Anything but the surprisingly slow, seductive and beautifully simple melodies contained within the San-Fransisco based band's latest CD,Conduct...
Read about a new album from Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello and you can picture the record executives having a field day: the swinging songsmith meets the aging king of punk! Austin Powers plus Sid Vicious! Sex appeal and intellectual cachet! It must be a senseless gimmick just dying for a shot of arch hipness, you can practically assume. Another dud for the remainders bin. Fortunately for us, though, these songwriters have in fact crafted an album that is subtle, passionate and captivating. Pieced together by Bacharach and Costello during spare moments together in hotel suites on rented pianos...
Elvis Costello, angry young punk, might seem an odd sort to collaborate with a composer of sugary and sophisticated pop songs. However, his abilities as a songwriter, even in his early and admirable punk work, tended towards surprising revelations and explorations of the dark sides of love and politics; he even cited Bacharach and David as influences on his post-punk swaggering forays into murky emotions. Like Bacharach, Costello composes music that can quiver like shifting sands, leaning gently into a tremor of eloquence and anguish...
...anthropology concentrator-by-day, Record Hospital deejay-by-night contemplates whether to comply and play a tune by the punk group the Dead Kennedys. This has happened many times before...
...Erlandson's spare guitar on Northern Star; or the line in the enchanting Malibu when she breaks the song's sweet spell, growling, "And I knew/ Love would tear you apart/ Oh and I knew/ The darkest secret of your heart." This CD has pop skin, but it bleeds punk...