Brace for impact, and hope you don’t peak too soon - Trash Fashion take an anarchic and irreverent approach to the nu-rave genre, welding the frantic bleeping synths of the early nineties to amped-up disco basslines and rocky guitar riffs, topped off with surreal narratives and screamed vocal hooks. On paper, it’s a musical car-crash; on record, it somehow transcends itself.
The title track “Mom & Daddy” revels in its own lowbrow trashiness, a dumb anthem to the night before the morning after that asks no questions and tells no lies. This is the sort of thing that you’ll frantically dance to twenty minutes before the club closes, while simultaneously trying to down your last pint, cop off with someone, and remember which pocket you put your glow-sticks in.
In its heyday rave was knowingly silly and hedonistic, an avowed rebellion against tradition - an anti-music. Unlike many bands of their ilk, Trash Fashion seem to have not only remembered this but decided to celebrate it. Their songs are just plain daft – written with a focus on fun and danceability rather than some nebulous message or mission – and the Mom & Daddy EP is proof positive that deconstruction is best done while wearing a shit-eating grin.
The live version of “You’re Dead” demonstrates this flat-out silliness – if you can’t tell they’re joking on record, it must be brutally obvious when they’re on stage. Maybe someone will discover a way to make serious music in this style, but until that point I think the plaudits have to go to the bands who’ve decided to just have a laugh with it. The brace of remixes that close this single underline the point – all you need is a beat, some bass and bleeps, and a repeated vocal hook motif. Job done.
But, at the risk of belabouring the point – abandon seriousness, all ye who enter here. Really. It’s not big, and it’s not clever. Trash Fashion are not the art in your party, they’re the party in your art – the Church of Noise, not the Sistine Chapel. “Mom & Daddy” is a brash disco racket for shaking your drunken arse to. Nothing more, and nothing less.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: metal, Mom & Daddy, nu-rave, punk, Trash Fashion
