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Melody Maker, 2 July 1994 Simon Price When I Saluted the Beastie Boys' jaw-dropping Check Your Head two years ago, people laughed openly. Now they're the hippest ticket in town. Sorry to be a c*** about this, but where the f*** were you in '92? Maybe The Brotherhood will be as cool as the Beasties one day: they've got House Of Pain-ish just-discharged-from-the-Marines yob appeal, Young Black Teenagers-ish Loonee Tunes samples, and very impeccable KRS1-ish anti-gun cred ('So You Wanna Be A Gangsta'), without ever being a tad less than macho. Then again, maybe they'll be flipping burgers. There's a whole load of wank talked about 'female intuition', but Luscious Jackson have, undeniably, got it. At first sight, they're disappointingly, uh, undemonstrative, then I realise it's all about cool. LJ are cool in a very New York sort of way (just like Elastica are cool in a very London sort of way): the gang every girl wishes they were in, the band Sonic Youth are too dumb to become. The subtle alchemy behind songs like 'Daughters Of The KAOS', 'Let Yourself Get Down' and 'Keep On Rockin' It' is the way a deceptively simplistic pump-up-the-treble clatter (tinny guitar, juicy Lipps Inc vocals, dime-store snare drums) veils an assured sophistry (trilling keyboard arpeggios, barely perceptible sampled hoots and sirens). Absolutely the sound of slow sex on a hot, dry city afternoon while the hustle of the street down below filters through an open window. If LJ are Roberto Baggio and Gheorghe Hagi, then The Goats are an absolute Alexi Lalas, no, Carlos Valderrama of a band (That'll be a list of seventeenth century baroque sculptors, right? — Ed). More than anyone else on the bill, they do justice to tonight's canvas backdrop (a huge, stoned elephant slumped in a sofa). Like, say, New Kingdom or Kaliphz, The Goats are a rrribald rrruffneck rrriot. Rrroar like a lion. Turn the place into a field of amphetamine Zebedees. As Alan Partridge might say, "Shit, did you see that?" The Beasties' Second Coming is greeted with a marginally more ecstatic reception than Jack's Army will be in Dublin in a week or two. Mike D and Ad-Rock bound out like Beavis & Butt-head after prolonged solvent abuse. MCA, as ever, affects an unshaven, charlied-up slouch. The place goes baboon-shit. You know how, when you're eight years old and you see the cardboard tube out of a kitchen roll, you just have to make silly noises with it? This is how the Beastie Boys play (with) funk. They're still rampaging through the same musical kindergarten: clothes-peg-on-the-nose vocals (force-fed thru the comb-and-paper fuzz of the world's cheapest microphones), infantile let's-get-this-party-started, I'm-Mike-D-and-you-ain't clichés... But, these days, the planecrash thrash/(sc)rap metal/drop-the-bomb hip-hop of Licensed To Ill, the slick Seventies mannerisms of Paul's Boutique, the rehearsal-room claustro-funk (nothing but a compliment) of Check Your Head, and the more-of-the-same-but-who's-complaining Ill Communication all blur into one. Thrashpunk anomalies (the awesome opener, 'Sure Shot', the ancient 'Heart Attack Man') and familiar classics ('Time To Get Ill', 'Finger Lickin' Good' and the Sabbath-sampling monster 'Rhymin' & Stealin'') aside, it all coalesces into a single relentless, slammin' rubber-mallet groove. They're the Ramones of funk. Last thing I remember, I was bouncing up and down shouting, "ALIBABA AND THE 40 THIEVES!!!" I wasn't alone. Veiny-necked, boggle-eyed, custard-cropped genius. One of the Ryans of the year, and no mistake. |
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