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Review: 'Black Grape'
'Pop Voodoo'   

-  Label: 'UMC Recordings'
-  Genre: 'Indie' -  Release Date: '7th July 2017'

Our Rating:
Hey, who in their late teens or early twenties didn’t latch onto and endlessly use the line ‘you’re twisting my melon, man’ back in the early 90s? Even as a surly fifteen-tear-old goth, the phrase passed my lips with remarkable frequency – ironically, of course. We were – then – still in the postmodern era, when irony was king. And perhaps the greatest irony was that the Mondays’ best – and best known – song, which also translated as their biggest hit was also a cover. They may have been a great party band but history shows that they were never a great band, and Black Grape were simply a limp attempt to recapture the spirit of the Madchester heyday. It flickered briefly for a moment thanks to Chris Evans and the lad culture of the late 90s, but ultimately, an album with googly eyes on the jewel case is still only as good as the songs it contains.

20 years (and some) on and Black Grape are back. No doubt a lot of people of a certain age – probably around my age, as it happens – will be delighted. But almost 20 years after ‘lad culture’ was consigned to the dustbin of shit history, do we really need more half-arsed bollocks from Shaun Ryder and co? He may have cleaned up his act in recent years, but this doesn’t mean he’s suddenly transformed in terms of his artistic and lyrical abilities.

‘Everything You Know is Wrong’ features samples and Ryder rapping a political rant in pissed-up bloke down the pub style (‘fuckin’ Donald Trump!’ etc.) over a sweaty funk groove and parping horns. It pretty much sets the tone and paves the way for a set of limp funk-tinged tunes with shuffling, baggy beats overlaid with brass embellishments.

I write as a fan off The Fall. But while Mark E Smith, even now, continues to show flashes of abstract genius in his endless knots of impenetrable lyrical tangents and has a back catalogue that glows with pearls, however wilfully perverse in their construction, Ryder has never demonstrated any real lexical adroitness.

‘Pop Voodoo’ does at least fulfil one of its promises, in that it is, in places, very much pop in its musical style. The title track appropriates from Depeche Mode’s ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ and slaps the whole mess together with jazz horns and a repetitive guitar line that’s only catchy because it’s so repetitive. But ultimately, the whole thing’s an overloading, overdone mess, with a lot going on but little to show for it.

Sure, the songs range from the ebullient and boisterous (‘Whisky, Wine and Ham’) to the more mellow and downbeat (‘Money Burns’), but the effect is of a lazy collection of material, built around simple and endless repetitions, executed in a competent but largely lacklustre fashion. ‘Pop Voodoo’s greatest shortcoming is that it lacks any real relevance. Ryder may bleat and rave about social media and all the rest, but it’s hardly cutting-edge social commentary on offer here. Paired with a bunch of forgettable tunes there’s nothing remotely magical about ‘Pop Voodoo’.
  author: Christopher Nosnibor

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Black Grape - Pop Voodoo