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CSS Ruin Christmas

CSS Live at Brighton Dome, 14th December 2007

CSS haven’t had much of a challenge bringing sexy back to popular Indie music. Some may be enamoured by Alex Turner’s vexing Northern Brogue (‘He‘s a scumbag don‘t you know’) and others by Brandon Flowers pseudo-Springsteen moustache (‘And my lips, they don’t kiss, they don’t kiss the way they used to’), but for me it’s the spicy vocal delivery of CSS front woman Lovefoxxx that makes me wonder if guys can be groupies too.

I was in the kitchen with a large pre-gig Grey Goose and cranberry juice when I received the first bad omen of the night. After sharing my schemes to plough through the inevitably underage and feeble crowd to grope any stage diving Lovefoxxxes, I was informed that the object of my affection recently became engaged to the guitarist from The Klaxons. Apparently she even has his name tattooed on her arm. Fortunately for her my name is also Simon, so I figured that I was at least half way in. We proceeded to the Brighton Dome undeterred.

After intentionally missing the support act(s), we merged into the crowd exactly as the lights dimmed and CSS appeared on stage dressed as Christmas presents. Before they had a chance to unwrap opening song ‘Fuck Off Is Not The Only Thing You Have To Show’, I had casually strutted my way right up to the second row and the front barrier. Beneficial as this was to my viewpoint, I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of excited group of music hungry young people would let me get a prime spot without even a little resistance. I turned around to see a pretty thin crowd, and a lot of empty seats upstairs. Indeed, although everyone seemed at least more than enthused, the atmosphere lacked a certain electricity. Perhaps it was the Christmas season that had dampened peoples’ spirits, but this gig was neither loud nor raucous enough. I was worried CSS could sense it.

We were treated to the band’s limited but almost faultless catalogue, including ‘Alala’, ‘Alcohol’, plus quite a few new tracks that received a happy yet sedated response. I also closely monitored Lovefoxxx as she removed layers of body suits decorated with hand prints in appropriate places. Their performance was equally tight, and most hints of transmitted sterility from the audience were dispelled by the bands’ natural stage presence. As they hit the highlight of their set, ‘Music Is My Hot Hot Sex’, I had a moderate epiphany.

Not a single member of CSS is conventionally attractive, but everything about them just screams sex. We all know its not what you wear, but how you wear it that counts, and the rock star look epitomises this because it attacks and blends the senses. CSS were doing to me what some generic indie band playing in London at the same time were doing to an audience of screaming girls. It wasn’t like being impressed by ‘the fit one from Girls Aloud’, I was forming an attraction based entirely on sex appeal, not purely on aesthetics. I prefer to say that there was something in Lovefoxxx’s kissable voice and suggestive behaviour that knew exactly how to press the ‘dirty bitch’ button (located underneath the right ventricle) in the male heart. Being a red blooded twenty one year old male, my interpretation of this at the time was to relentlessly eye fuck her if she but dared to glance in my direction.

CSS are proof of the tension between fashion and sex. Of course they looked amazing, but they also had something else that imitators of the look might find harder to achieve. Sex appeal. As if aware of this insidious paradigm, fashion took its revenge. I was looking at the skinny guitarist wondering why she didn’t have an ass and whether I could play powerchords faster than her when this happened:

Somebody threw a shoe on stage which hit Lovefoxxx in the face. Gig over.

I’ve been to Reading Festival, so I’ve witnessed some classic examples of crowd-to-stage damage. I’ve seen The Rasmus pummelled, and everything from containers of urine to garden furniture being hurtled at 50 Cent. But one solitary object, possibly thrown by accident? Come on. Even the guy from Panic! at the Disco kept going after a bottle met his face, and he was knocked unconscious for a bit. Check your medical dictionary. It’ll clearly say that if Panic! can take it, you bloody well can too.

Things always get thrown on stage during a show, and whether its intentional or not, you still act professional. Punishing the entire audience because of one person with skilful aim is just rude. Considering the fact that the rest of the young crowd tried to cheer them back onstage, this conclusion was pretty much a big ‘fuck you’, especially at this festive time of year. Was it a publicity stunt as a way to deal with a poor selling gig, or did CSS just ruin Christmas? I was quite disappointed that vigilante justice was not suggested, but at least we kept our eyes open for nefarious characters hopping towards the exit.

I guess if you call your daughter Lovefoxxx, what do you expect her to grow up to be? Sex appeal is all about how you carry yourself, and if that happens to be ‘swiftly back to your tour bus with a heel stuck in your forehead’, the effect is more than a little bit ruined. Due to the relationship between sex appeal and fashion that this gig began by highlighting, I find it quite amusing that of all things, it was a shoe that defeated them. I’ve rarely thought of footwear as subversive to exposition of the truth, but there’s the evidence. PWNED indeed. Now that my passions for this band have dimmed, my affection has been transferred to Riot Becki from The Pippettes. She’s even from Brighton, so surely I can’t fail to possess her when I get to see them live. Unless the same phantom attacks her with a jagged ankle bracelet mid tune.

So I’m sorry, Lovefoxxx, but you have broken my heart. I feel I must quote your break-up song ‘This month, Day 10’ which I’m sure I would have heard you sing, had you not fucked off prematurely. ‘So, if someday we get to meet again, in a car crash, plane wreck, terrorist attack, or maybe next Thursday night, don’t bother saying hi…’

‘I’ll be rude, I’ll be rude, I’ll be rude. Only with you. Only with you.’

Pendulum, In Silico Review

Pendulum warned us they were going to change, and they did. In opening track ‘Showdown’, they remind us about the flak they received from the drum and bass crowd concerning their crossover success with rock fans: ‘I know you thought I’d sold my soul, but never told me to my face. I just had to leave you cold, and blow this shit awaaay.’ This is a most unfortunate statement for the band who aim to blend the dynamic power of drum and bass with the immediacy of rock because, put bluntly, most asthmatics blow shit away harder than this album does.

‘Showdown’ is agonising and incongruent, and therefore a highly unexpected opener from the band who penned ‘Slam’, ‘Blood Sugar’, and also somehow improved a Prodigy track with their remix of ‘Voodoo People’. Don’t worry, I get the idea, it’s meant to be incongruent. It fuses two opposing genres into a kind of duel, as the track changes focus and tone half way through. Thing is, it‘s just too tepid to pull it off. The epic title implies an Old West gunfight, not Brokeback Mountain. Pendulum have gone from music revolution to cowboy sodomy in one album, and I for one am a little upset about this fact.

The problems with In Silico are numerous: the beats suck, it’s overproduced, and there is too much emphasis on songwriter Rob Swire’s vocals. Lead single ‘Propane Nightmares’ has probably received most of this criticism for supposedly being emo and getting Radio 1 exposure. However, I’d argue that when Pendulum veer off more to the rock side of things, they manage to salvage the album from complete failure. Granite is another success, but both of these feel like album tracks to a far greater single that just does not exist. They do rock very hard, but none of the more drum and bass flavoured offerings compete with anything on Hold Your Colour. The ones on display here are repetitive and lack the impact Pendulum had previously mastered with atmospheric samples and cunning build up. See: ‘Through The Loop’ and ‘Girl in the Fire’.

In Silico is supposed to mean born of computers, as if their rock style is the offspring of aggressive industrial coitus and contemporary technological wizardry. As many other reviews have noted, this is exactly the problem. Pendulum used to be great because they made cool electronic music with the urgency of real instruments. Now they make lacklustre rock music that sounds like it’s been fed through and corrupted by a word processor. The image of the Microsoft paperclip appearing during production is almost too lucid: I see you’re trying to fuck up a musical revolution, how can I help? Therefore appropriately, ‘Mutiny’ is the most cringe worthy treat here, with an out of place guitar solo and a breakdown ripped straight from the Arctic Monkeys. Stupid paperclip, why couldn’t they just have written a letter instead?

Yes, I believed Pendulum were set to revolutionise music, but part of me still does. Ever since hearing Cubanate and Econoline Crush remixes on video game sound tracks, I’ve been waiting for a band to pull off awesome guitar riffs with electronic beats, and this should have been the album to perfect it. It is not. This is made even more humiliating by the fact that they actually get so very close with ‘Granite’ and ‘Propane Nightmares’, and then it’s downright annoying when we hear how the album closes. ‘The Tempest’ is exactly what I was hoping for, and may be the best thing you’ll hear all year: a perfect fusion of multiple genres that illustrates Pendulum’s power as well as the void that they could fill. For me, these three tracks make the album worth the purchase, but it’s not enough to put the band where they should be, and for this they deserve to be punished.

Born of machines? Methinks this one should have been aborted. If I ever meet Rob Swire with his laptop, I’m pushing him down the stairs.