CSS - 'Left Behind'
A short while ago, I read one of those NME features where they pull apart an album by a current musical act, and suggest some of the artists from the olden days who might have directly influenced their sound. When they did CSS, they suggested that in attitude, the band borrow heavily from the pioneering pop/dance/rock fusion of a band like Blondie, with the idea that cool things and uncool things can sit together quite happily if you just lose those pesky inhibitions and get loose...
Which is a fair point, except CSS have only really taken on Blondie's amazing pop perfection with their second album. Their first, which was the one under the microscope at the time, is a far more ramshackle, thrown-together affair, especially with Lovefoxxx's sing-song confrontational vocal poetry, suggesting that if a debt is owed to a female-fronted band from that era, it's the Slits, rather than Blondie.
Of course, this is all academic now, because, almost as if they were reading that very article and acting on it, the Blondiefication of CSS has begun.
(Sorry, couldn't find a real video. Oh well...)
Hark! Propery sugary pop tunes and a killer chorus! Lo! Fresh levels of professionalism and togetherness are reached! And soft! Is that a mild case of Avril Lavigne-meets-LCD Soundsystem I see before me? And does it matter if it is? No, I thought not.
Also, for a band who wrote a sardonic song about meeting Paris Hilton, and then met Paris Hilton and made friends with her, it's really cute that this song should sound so much like a low-rent slacker cousin to Ashlee Simpson's still-great 'Outta My Head'. Not that Ashlee Simpson is Paris Hilton, or even related to Paris Hilton, but still...
There's a great Eddie Izzard routine about cool, in which he says that it's a circle. The more uncool you are, the closer to being amazingly cool you become, and the more cool you become, the closer to being a Zoolander-esque preening ninny you get. CSS have not only identified the line at which the changeover takes place, they're dancing across it, forwards and back, forever.
Download: Out now
CD Released: July 14th
(Fraser McAlpine)
PS: The doesn't like the album. Possibly the Blondification is having serious side effects...
Comment number 1.
At 9th Jul 2008, jcooper02 wrote:i wouldnt listen to the nme if i were you. anyone worth their salt who has a half decent interest in music knows the nme is for 19yr old student snobs that actually listen to very little music - it is unbelievably limited.
i cant really say i read any publication involving music, cos they're all much of a muchness. the nme does specifically bore me. but hey, their sales are rapidily dropping so here's hoping they realise how out of touch they are with the modern music listener.
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