It’s all about theatre, dahling, and ‘The Lecher’s Waltz’ cranks up the camp for some Rocky Horror-esque flamboyance. The sleaze is ratcheted up to twelve on this bag of cornball cabaret.
The band members have uninventive pseudonimous monikers: cringe-inducing 80s sleaze-rock throwback Rasp, who resembles a cut-price Blackie Lawless tribute artist, is accompanied by, amongst others, Duncan DeMorgan, Pete Moriarty and, er, Claire Rabbitt. And a right bunch of bozos they look too.
Song titles don’t come much chesier than ‘Pornstar Shotgun’, ‘Gun Barrel Pupils’, ‘Cruella DeVille’ and ‘Debutante Warnings’ and the lyrics and music correspond with expectation. The title track is a swinging pirate burlesque, and on ‘Delilah 666’, Rasp croons coquettishly, ‘O Delilah 666 ya know not what ya do! / Don’t ya know those stockings make men like me come unglued?’ Alex Harvey would turn in his grave.
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And that’s about as good as it gets, with the CD booklet’s centre spread depicting an open-shirted Rasp and friends in a fifteen-way clinch with a scantily-clad cabaret chorus line. But it’s all performance, cock-teasing and titillation through double-entendres and puns, all smutty talk and no action. It’s a striptease with tassles that takes place behind a screen... basically, no meat to speak of and a lot of two veg.
Rasp Thorne & the Briars Online
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