You can't beat a bit of artifice and pretension in our dear old pop business, can you? After all, why settle for simply Simon when you can be 'The Atmosphere' or plain old JP when you can send the girls wild as 'The Dragon'. Ooh, that's enough to get the old pulses racing, eh?
Thus, the enigmatic MARMADUKE DUKE (whisper it: it's really Simon from Biffy Clyro and JP from Sucioperro, but you knew that, right?) are a thinly-veiled enigma on the landscape, though they are sure enjoying themselves with smoke and mirrors on this second MD album 'Duke Pandemonium'.
Recorded and mixed in a 24-hour marathon at New York's Electric Lady with help from Muse/ Franz Ferdinand producer Rich Costey, 'Duke Pandemonium' is all things to all (wo)men. It's seething, breathless, occasionally extremely sublime and sometimes virtually chokes as it bites off way more than it can ever hope to chew. 'Eclectic' really ain't the half of it, believe me.
Opening 1-2 'Heartburn' and 'Everybody Dance' alone stuff more ideas into five minutes than most bands manage over three albums. 'Heartburn' is truly odd, with heavy beats and electronic doodling sparring with falsetto-tinged vocals and then veering off down an entirely different blind alley come the chorus. You've just about got it pegged, when 'Everybody Dance' kicks in, with the Duke having soaked up the urban NYC of The Bush Tetras and Talking Heads and making like an even-more frantic White Denim come the chorus.
If your eyeballs and synapses haven't yet snapped, there's some good stuff coming along. 'Silhouettes' comes on strong with niggly guitar hooks enjoying a dalliance with a hypnotic, LCD Soundsystem-style backdrop and the nerve-shredding 'Music Show' more than enough to blast the pegs off the dance tent at your next summer festival.
|
The album arguably peaks with 'Kid Gloves'. A smouldering, mid-fi slice of electro-chanson featuring a lovely shadowing backing vocal from Connie Mitchell, the simple fact it lets the unadorned melody seep out and cherishes it is why it's so successful and it's quite easily the album's most sublime pop moment.
So it's all the more frustrating when it's followed by the lunatic stylistic spew of 'Demon' (Liquid Liquid meet the Akoustic Anarkhy brigade at the Cambridge Folk Festival anyone?) and the frazzled, short-circuiting electro mash-up of, er, 'Erotic Robot'. Look, I'm not making the titles up, OK?
Thankfully, they've still got time to convince us all over again and they do that in style with the skinny, Rapture-ish 'Je Suis Un Funky Homme', the ridiculously brief 'Rubber Lover' and finally the supremely daft 'Skin The Mofo' which is on first name terms with gratuitous puerility, but also potent inspiration. Ultimately, it's simply too funny to deny, however hard-hearted you may wish to try and remain.
'Duke Pandemonium', then, is one hell of a diverse Mofo. Within a maniacal 35 minutes, it plants its' flags all over the stylistic pop map, slips on numerous banana skins, blows raspberries and emerges with a couple of truly fantastic pop songs we'll remember for some time to come. It really is the sound of bedlam a go-go in full effect.
|
