RATING: *****
Pretty Suicide |
NY LOOSE Year of the Rat (1996) Hollywood Records by Gerald Tan In 1981, Debbie Harry told us to "say don't stop to punk rock" in "Rapture", a song that was number 1 in America and number 5 in the United Kingdom. On both sides of the Atlantic, nihilistic unwashed adolescents in leather jackets took that message to heart, and happily, punk survived the adenoidal, synthesized '80s in one scruffy form or another. Punk metal, surf punk, ska punk, horror punk, skate punk, death punk, Christian punk, punk pop, hard core - all with the proverbial hand on the zipper so as to take a piss on the establishment wherever it may be found. Punk rock... yeah. So it's 1996, and it must be that only God or Iggy Pop knows why in the midst of a so-called punk revival, the face of punk is to be found on the grinning mugs of happy-go-lucky bastards like Green Day. People who wouldn't have a bone to pick if one got stuck in their throats. If a million people are going to buy a 'punk album', it should really be NY Loose's YEAR OF THE RAT. So they copped their name from a Stooges' song and stuck an NY in front of it, but at least right off, like punk legends the New York Dolls (as well as decidely non-punk establishments like DKNY and NYDC) you know that they're from New York and not Alaska. Or worse, Seattle. And with that kind of iconoclastic gall, it helps that NY Loose are the real, unpretentious article - vociferously disaffected street punks who play fast, catchy, cathartically furious 3-minute shots of your vintage nihilistic dogma. But that said, they're not throwbacks or hangers-on either. The original authority-destroying message of punk is going to do as much as it did back in the late '70s. Which is to say, nothing. So punk's only relevant distillation is maximum rock n' roll - attitude as opposed to agenda. It's like what's said on one of the "fortune cookie" sayings that you'll find scattered on the inner sleeve of NY Loose's album: "Rage is a matter of feelings, not fears". And that's just what you get on YEAR OF THE RAT. Lines like "Least I know with you it's always gonna be a bad time", "I'm not bigger than this burden", and "It doesn't phase me/I'd trash the given chance" alone sound like the confessions of a defeated soul, but vocalist Brijitte West sings them in the quinessentially punk manner - pissed-off and unapologetic. Together with the rage, there's also the biting, semi-ironic humour that comes across in lines like "She was such a pretty suicide/oh what a beautiful mess" and the sneeringly-purveyed "apathy is golden/ apathy is good". Or in "Detanator", when a none-too concilliatory Ms West tells a lover, "I'm so bored, but not as bored as you are boring/I'm a bitch/But you've always known how to bring out my best". And on the flipside, there's "Hide", an eerie outsider's lullaby that starts with a few desolate strums on the guitar, and then runs off into a harrowing caterwaul of screeching riffs. Best of all, NY Loose aren't afraid to play their instruments like they actually know how to (unlike bands who can't and say it's punk not to know how to), and are shameless enough to turn in a straight, '60s pop rendition of the Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning", Brijitte West cooing all over the string orchestra like a flesh and blood version of Wendy James. So nevermind that anarchy isn't on the menu, in this case hearing someone in tight jeans and a leather jacket going "ooh.. yeah!" two dozen or so times on a song called "Spit" is by far a purer rock n' roll experience. 1997 may be the 20th anniversary of the Sex Pistols' NEVERMIND THE BOLLOCKS, HERE'S THE SEX PISTOLS and the Ramones' "Sheena Was A Punk Rocker". But 1997 is also the Year of the Pig. 1996, on the other hand, is in no uncertain terms the Year of the Rat.
Gerald Tan was naturally born in the Year of the Rat.
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