If you'd ever wondered what would happen if the singers of Jet, Green Day, Rooster and Hanson were sent back to '72 and locked in a garage with only their mums' make-up bags and a copy of It's Easy to Play T-Rex to entertain themselves, look at Louis XIV and the mystery's well and truly solved. The latest bunch of androgynous retrospectives, in an attempt to standout from the current glut of eyelinered wannabes, have side-stepped the en vogue 80s kids and stumbled even further back into the world of Mud, Sweet and Bolan. There's even a touch of the mighty Quo about them, not in a pony-tailed, denim clad synchronised guitar swinging way, but definitely in the exploitation of the three chord riff. Each song has something undeniably simple about it be it a chugging one note bass line or a Meg-White-does-Tiger Feet drum track which leaves more than enough head space to truly absorb the arrest-beckoning sadomasochistic, Debbie does Dallas inspired lyrics. Either they're the greatest masters of sexually charged acts of depravity the world has ever seen, or, more likely, they've spent far too much time thinking about what they might get up to if only they weren't such nice boys. For all the strutting about the stage, hands held aloft in Hitler-esque salutes, fags dripping off bottom lips and wastedness updates you can’t really believe that the bunch of 3-piece suited overstyled self-indulgent throwbacks are as nefarious and twisted as they’re trying to make out. Looking round at the audience though, you can’t knock Louis XIV for giving this particular crowd exactly what they want. With the exception of a couple of rows of Busted-shorted proto-rockers, there was a significant dad contingent, side stepping away, awe-inspired, mouthing ‘Amazing!’ at each other and truly loving the fact that they’d discovered a band that’s going to make them look cool in front of Jim and Brian at the next PTA meeting. Although new single ‘God killed the Queen’s’ getting the hype at the moment, the track that really stands up is ‘Finding out true love is blind’, so much so that it didn’t matter that it was the set-ender, the encore and the post-encore. With lyrics such as ‘Wind you up and make you crawl to me, tie you up until you call to me’, spilling lasciviously out of the mouths of Hill and Karscig, you get seduced into really not caring that they’re as musically progressive as a bag of lard and find yourself getting pseudo- sleazily diverted into thinking about buying the EP; just make sure you leave the album for the proper grown-ups. |
