Search - Githead :: Art Pop (Dig)

Tonight we're going to party like it 1986!

Mons | Norrpan | 10/26/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"At last! fans of Mute-era Wire can rejoice (or at least give a thumbs-up). Colin Newman has teamed up with like-minded artists to craft tasty nuggets of noisepoetry in 4/4 time. Githead doesn't pretend to break down any musical boundaries, instead it is happy to squeeze out new nuances from an established mid-80s postpunkpop template: bass, drums, guitar, synths and weird singing - the kind employed with good results in later Wire records such "snakedrill ep". Colin Newman's accomplices here are Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner) and Malka Spigel both of whom are prolific electronica artists in their own right. But there's not too much knob twiddling à la Aphex Twin going on here, the pop format is adhered to fairly rigidly. But Githead - good name - also features the distinctive vocals of Colin Newman who at times seems to have chosen his diction from an instructional manual. Great!

As the album title suggests Githead sits on the fence between pop and art without committing firmly to either one. Art Pop is thus unlikely to win any grammies or receive drooling reviews in the underground press. But this is nevertheless a solid record brimming with enough ideas to keep old postpunk connoiseuye...coness...connesu...fans like me happy. Fencesitting rarely sounded this good.

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