Friday Fivehead: The Buggles, Don Turbolento and Does It Offend You, Yeah?, Infadels, and Snoop D-O-

It’s Friday, and time for a new feature here on The New Pollution (and, hopefully, the music groups that I also post to): The Friday Fivehead—five quick reviews of albums so awesome they will knock your hairline back a few inches! Some of the music will, naturally, be brand new, hot-off-the-skillet fare, but you can expect me to throw in some forgotten, overlooked, or otherwise “old” jams as well, ’cause sometimes y’all just needs to be reminded just how damned awesome some older music is. Hey, maybe you missed it your first time through, or you’re a youngster who needs some educatin’. At any rate, enough of the preliminary jibba-jabba: let’s get shakin’ here, peeps.

(The) Buggles‘ first album The Age of Plastic came out in 1980. Twentyeight years ago. Almost three decades. And yet…even today, in 2008, this album still sounds remarkably futuristic. And it’s not because of the futuristic, science-fictional bent of the lyrics (most notable in songs like “The Plastic Age”, “I Love You Miss Robot”, and “Johnny On The Monorail”). Even though the music on The Age of Plastic features perfectly average late-20th-Century instruments like guitars, acoustic drums, and of course oldskool analog synths that you could hear featured prominently on many a rock, pop, post-punk, or even “easy listening” album in 1980, the songs’ arrangements by certifiable musical genius Trevor Horn (who seems to be able to turn any musical project he touches into gold [see Yes, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Seal, and, of course, The Art of Noise]) and occasional-collaborator Bruce Woolley give them a catchy, pop-inflected, but eerie and almost alienating strangeness that conjures images of gleaming skyscrapers, robot maids, flying cars, and silver spacesuits even while the songs have you bouncing and bopping around. This album is like an artifact from the post-Singularity future; it’s as if Trevor Horn wrote this album sometime in 2061, awash in amazing technology but wistful and nostalgic for the music of the 1980s…so in 2061 he wrote a retro-pop album that somehow made its way back in time to give us a glimpse of a transcendental future full of awesome rockamaroll!

Don Turbolento is one of the best bands I’ve ever discovered via MySpace…a site which I just love to hate, even as it A) provides my music with a means of reaching more and more fans and B) exposes me everyday to more and more great music. DT is a two-man electro firestorm from Italy, so chances are, you probably won’t be seeing them live anytime soon if you live in the States and…well, one must go through less-than-scrupulous means to secure their debut self-titled album. But holy crap, do it! Minimal analog synths bounce along over skittering, scattering—but always danceable—live drums while Dario Bertolotti’s pure, unadulterated post-punk vocals stab through to set off neon bursts of New Wave dynamite under your ass. This is an album aimed at both electro and post-punk fans alike, and its aim is simple and almost religiously pure: to provide you with powerful synth-driven dance-punk that will keep your dancefloors sparkling and your computer speakers glittering. Their music is smooth, yet rough-edged and jittery; polished, yet abrasive at times and slightly rusty around the joins. This album is, in fact, the very definition of modern retro: an honest attempt to produce something that sounds like it should’ve come out in 1978…and goddamn does Don Turbolento do a superior job of doing so! Stuff the “retro is so over” attitude up your arses, hipsters, and just dance and be glad that there are bands like this producing such great dance music for you. Otherwise, what would you be doing? Listening to emo?

Does It Offend You, Yeah? is one of those simply ca-razy bands like Holy Fuck that just sound like a full-on electropunk freak-out. You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Into, their first album after a number of singles that only hinted at the depths of snarly power they could pump out, is chock full of great, high-energy jams that manage to marry the low-brow snottiness of classic ’70s punk with experimental electronic music in such a way the entire album sizzles with electricity and attitude. The band’s name is perfectly chosen. This is a seriously in-your-face musical effort that very well could offend electronic and punk purists. GOOD FOR ‘EM. Anyone who finds him- or herself so wrapped up in issues of genre purity needs punched in the teeth. Does It Offend You, Yeah? is so full of crossover craziness that they’re damnear impossible to define, but comparisons with The Automatics and Enon are probably spot on. DIOY,Y? is a thousand times more confrontational that anyone else, though; this record blasts out of your speakers like an army of Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers full of beer and looking for a good damn time that might destroy your livingroom.

 

Infadels debut album We Are Not the Infadels proves that yes, the Infadels really are all they’re cracked up to be. Equal parts britpop, dance-punk, and glam-rock, Infadels sounds a bit like a more British, more New Wave-oriented Scissor Sisters with a more electronic feel and an Oasis-like bad attitude. The lead song on the album, “Love Like Semtex,” sounds like classic Duran Duran mixed with The Soup Dragons and The Faint. If you like your dance music melodic, catchy, and complex but still extremely easy to bounce to, then We Are Not the Infadels is the album for you. If Don Tubolento and Does It Offend You, Yeah? are a little too hard-edged for you, but you still like that New Wavey guitars-and-synthesizers dance sound, then Infadels will definitely satisfy. The album is smoking hot and full of energy from track 1 through track 11, with only one mysterious lull (”1′20″) to give you a second to relax before we’re back to the rockamaroll. Highly recommended.

 

 

And finally, venerable ol’ Snoop Doggity Dogg, the ol’ D-O-Double-G Himself is back with his ninth—NINTH, people!—album Ego Trippin. So what can you expect? Songs about bitches? Check. Songs about makin’ money? Check. Songs about being a bad-ass? Chickity-check. Songs soaked in the influence of late ’70s and early ’80s synth-funk goodness clearly inspired by and derived from The Gap Band (Charlie Wilson appears all over the album, again, as usual) and Prince, etc.? CHIZZECK! A country song dedicated to Johnny Cash that’s all about smokin’ reefer? Ch…What?! You heard me. “My Medicine” is a 100% country song. And it comes right in the middle of standard hiphop monster jams as “Staxxx in My Jeans”, “Ridin’ In My Chevy”, “Deez Hollywood Nights”, and the sensual dancefloor-destroying lead single, “Sensual Seduction/Sexual Eruption” (depending on whether you have the “explicit” or “clean” versions)*. Nonetheless, this record represents a much softer side of Snoop than the straight-up gangsta attitude of The Blue Carpet Treatment. This is an album by a man who is maturing despite the fact that he’s still pumping out swaggering numberings to keep his fans happy. The final three tracks, the incredibly heartfelt tribute to his wife “Once Chance (Make It Good)”, the heartwrenching soul anthem “Why Did You Leave Me” (which literally sounds like an updated Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes song), and the stirring Hood tribute “Can’t Say Goodbye” really show that Snoop could be making some very, very touching music if only he could permanently say goodbye to his gangsta side and all those who expect that from him and just write an album 100% from his real man’s heart. It would be something special to hear.

*And may I take a moment to say that “Sensual Seduction” actually sounds better than “Sexual Eruption.” The suggestive, but not blatant lyrics, work better with the ’80s feel of the song. The more sexually-explicit lyrics actually sound anachronistic. It’s almost like expecting to be listening to a Levert song and hearing Gerald Levert say, “I got a bad bitch wit’ me every day of the week.” It’s jarring, almost!

So that’s it, folks. The first Friday Fivehead is in the can…even though I actually just published it at 1:25am on Saturday morning. Come on, yo—I was playing D&D all day and buying my girlfriend a birthday present! Nonetheless, I bet you know what I was listening to all day as I was doing that stuff!

See you next week with even more jams and, before that, a thorough appreciation of power-metal masterminds Dragonforce! Keep your heads ringing, people. Peace!