It’s certainly unusual. There can’t be many albums built around the theme of the US political history of the 1960s, adopting the voices and getting into the minds of JFK, Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Kennedy. But then, there aren’t many albums that could be described in musical terms as electronica, punk style. Originally hailing from Warrington and having started out as a garage band, Extradition Order have expanded their lineup and their musical horizon, but haven’t completely abandoned their roots, and kick up a wild garage ruckus on a number of occasions here. But they’ve reached further from the template than any sane mind could conceive. And then there’s the subject matter: this is certainly no dumb party album.
Marching drums baton down spiralling bleeps and a strolling bassline on the manic ‘Boy in Uniform’. Dub grooves collide with a frenzied reimagining of Talking Heads as performed by The Stooges on ‘I Love an Eyesore (LJB ’60).’ ‘Founding Father’ may be a song about American political history, but musically it’s an homage to NY’s underground musical heritage, being dark and woozy, coming on like a Krautrock Suicide covering The Velvet Underground with a twist of The Cramps thrown in for good measure. In other words, ‘Kennedy’ is a wild hybrid work: the wobbly funk pop of ‘Rosemary’ (a song about the forgotten Kennedy sister who was subject to a full frontal lobotomy in 1941 and kept from the world until her death in 2005) owes a debt to Prince, and elsewhere there’s trippy space rock, psychedelia and a Madchester vibe drifts through ‘Inauguration’.
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Yet however comfortably they draw on such disparate styles, there’s something terminally awry: there’s a slanted, dissonant undercurrent that runs throughout the album, the vocals veering just low and wide of being on-key. The result is a shade disorientating. Perversely, for all of the comparisons and references, Extradition Order don’t sound like anyone else, and ‘Kennedy’ doesn’t sound like any other album. Warped genius indeed.
Extradition Order Online
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