Pure Morning After
Kenickie Get In (EMI)
TEENAGE GIRLS ARE AMONG THE most evil creatures on
the planet. Mink-like in their viciousness, they'd be out pillaging nests
and murdering baby rabbits were it not for more pressing concerns of matchless
disdain, shrivelling contempt and nicking make-up from Miss Selfridge.
Apart from teenage girls, the only people misguided
enough to think otherwise are men of a certain age, who've forgotten the
terror these beings exert and who still pretend that Kenickie - now tipping
over into their 20s - are nothing more than sassy adolescent stand-ups
in sequins. They keep them categorised as pop! (always with an exclamation
mark, don't you know) because pop! is funny and young. It only does what
it does because it wants to! Because it wants to! And there's no threat
in such charming wilfulness, no chance of it rocking anything, let alone
the boat.
So if it's always been easy to be suspicious
of Kenickie, "Get In" makes it clear that these suspicions rsult more from
reactions to them than the band's own actions. This is the sound of a band
refusing to play the game set out for them - attractive blonde singer,
chirpy attitude, ladders to the top - risking a slide down the snakes instead.
It's just as well there's no inherent value in
youth - as Kenickie's elderly relatives might say, they sound old beyond
their years. Pulp took 15 years of sex, squalor and success to hit the
crisis point of "This Is Hardcore". Kenickie, impressively, have managed
a similar rash of existential doubt in just under two years. If last years
debut, "At The Club!, was a giggly blur of fake fur and spilt vodka, then
this is the morning after, shivering at dawn with bad skin, a chemical
warhead hangover and a clutch of inexplicable bruises.
The social anthropology snapshots still remain
- "Night comes and your skin's all itchy so you eat toast in your best
friend's kitchen", sings Lauren Laverne on the "Girls And Boys" throb
of "Magnetron" - but the exuberant, lip glossed evil of "Punka" has been
replaced by the maturity shorthand of strings and synths, flamenco flamboyance
kicking up alongside deadpan electro, Shangrai-La's drumbeats booming next
to high-kicking pastiche. It's often audaciously bleak - the desolate "5am"
thudding past like a car stereo five floors down; "Weeknights" being Radiohead-mournful
- but they aren't stupid enough to go to the other Svengali-approved extreme
and dress up as tragic divas. If it's messy, it's because the situation
in "I Would Fix You" is messy; if it's brave, it's never foolish.
Get in the car, get into trouble, get in, shut
the door and sigh. As this record proves, it all sounds better in the morning.
(7)
Victoria Segal
NME
Article courtesy of Chris Todd