Art Brut: Brilliant! Tragic!

ART BRUT: BRILLIANT! TRAGIC! (2011)

1) Clever, Clever Jazz; 2) Lost Weekend; 3) Bad Comedian; 4) Sexy; 5) Is Dog Eared; 6) Martin Kemp; 7) Axl Rose; 8) I Am The Psychic; 9) Ice Hockey; 10) Sealand.

Eddie Argos has openly proclaimed this to be Art Brut's best album so far, but I believe that's just marketing. After all, if you are going to make your fourth record sound exactly like the previous three, you have to point the potential buyer's mind in the right direction. Now everyone who va­lues Eddie Argos' opinion will spend hours, days, weeks of their formerly precious time trying to decode all the subtle differences and G-E-T what it is exactly that makes Brilliant! Tragic! so brilliant. Which, in the logical end, is somewhat tragic.

No cosmetic changes this time: the band is still the same, and Frank Black remains in charge as producer. Bassist Freddy Feedback's backup vocals and a few lines of actual singing from Eddie (mostly confined to the line "Goodbye, don't cry" on 'Ice Hockey', hearing which makes it easy to under­stand the reluctance to use his voice as a musical instrument earlier on) are by far the only thing that makes a difference. That, and the near-total absence of fast and furious rock'n'roll, as the band drowns itself in either alt-rock-sludgy or indie-rock-fudgy mid-tempo.

'Ice Hockey' and 'Is Dog Eared', at five and a half and six minutes respectively, are brave attempts to pull themselves out of the trench they dug out for themselves with Bang Bang — brave, but ultimately useless, since neither gives any clear indication of where exactly they could be heading. Uh... art rock? 'Ice Hockey' is sort of like a tribute to David Bowie's space sagas, with multi-sec­tioning, moody acoustic intros, heavy-psychedelic guitar tones, astral voice overdubs, but it is way too crude and boring to be parody or kitsch, and way too primitive (not to mention out of place) to be a source of real inspiration. Maybe it was Mr. Black Francis pushing the band in that kind of territory, but it is simply not the kind of territory on which they will ever feel safe. They may be inspired by the Pixies, yes, but they will never become the next Pixies.

Whatever be, they are still at their best when they are just being good old Art Brut. The album's saving grace are Eddie's seemingly infinite waves of wisecracking, never lost on the critics — critics, being smart guys (or, more precisely, Smart Guys™) themselves, love other smart guys, and here are some samples of smartness for you:

"Clever clever jazz, man — sorry that doesn't sound like it's planned — we're working in a genre you don't understand"; "He's a bad comedian, I don't know what you see in him" (okay, that one doesn't really look all that smart outside of its context); "I want to be played in the background / While a couple drinks their wine / That would be a triumph, with a voice like mine"; "I want to give the world the finger / With the exception of my favourite lead singer... When the world's got you by the fucking throat / Who'd you want in your corner? AXL ROSE!"; "People in love lie around and get fat — I think I'm okay with that". Admit it, that's smart. And funny.

It is just that all this wicked sarcasm, masquerading as post-modern sacrilege, sort of gets lost in the haze: most of the lyrics aren't even discernible through the noise, and riff-wise, Brilliant! is the least satisfactory Art Brut album so far. Perhaps I need to rephrase that: it is their most «Art», but their least «Brut» album so far, and I have always preferred them for the latter rather than the former. Furthermore, we cannot even understand if they really are a one-trick pony or if they are capable of other kinds of goodness — because each and every attempt at broadening the palette so far has been feeble and tentative, and the results were neither here nor there. Perhaps it's high time Black Francis actually ditched them; his presence clearly does not help.

Check "Brilliant! Tragic!" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Brilliant! Tragic!" (MP3) on Amazon

Art Brut: Art Brut Vs. Satan

ART BRUT: ART BRUT VS. SATAN (2009)

1) Alcoholics Unanimous; 2) DC Comics And Chocolate Milkshake; 3) The Passenger; 4) Am I Normal?; 5) What A Rush; 6) Demons Out!; 7) Slap Dash For No Cash; 8) The Replacements; 9) Twist And Shout; 10) Summer Job; 11) Mysterious Bruises; 12*) Just Desserts; 13*) Catch.

Finally, Art Brut and their idol/admirer Frank Black get to work together. Come to think of it, it is not exactly clear why this band would need a «producer» at all — as long as they can properly plug in their instruments and get a part-time recording engineer assistant to keep the tapes rolling, this is pretty much everything that an Art Brut album requires. But, on the other hand, if we are simply talking about a chance to hang out and exchange one or two creative ideas, then perhaps it was the presence of Black Francis that freshened things up a bit.

«A bit» is the strongest measure of degree that I can mention, because, as long as Art Brut hold on to their groove, it will always hover somewhere just below the level of 'Formed A Band' and 'My Little Brother'. But intuition does cautiously suggest that the melodies may be a little more memorable, and that the lyrics may be back to the same level of sharpness that we first saw from these guys; at the very least, this time around very few songs are about relationships — boring, boring, boring! — and many more are about mocking the average representative of the consume­rist society — fun, fun, fun.

Certainly It's A Bit Complicated had nothing approaching the simplistic genius of 'The Replace­ments', a song whose riff has fewer chords than the average Ramones song but which, for some reason, I do not remember having heard on any Ramones record, and whose lyrics adequately sum up the brainset of the intellectually challenged music fan, spoilt to utter hopelessness by rea­ding one too many bad reviews: 'So many bands are just putting it on / Why can't they be the same as their songs?.. / I can't believe I've only just discovered the Replacements / Some of them are nearly as old as my parents!'

Nor did it have anything of the caliber of 'DC Comics And Chocolate Milkshake' — a song that some reviewers have called the ultimate anthem of arrested development, forgetting, out of mode­sty, to mention that, with lyrics like 'DC comics and chocolate milkshake, some things will al­ways be great; DC comics and chocolate milkshake, even though I'm twenty-eight', this is really the ultimate anthem of about half of the first world's population. And finally, finally someone got the guts to come out and ask the Artist's Most Important Questions: 'How can you sleep at night when nobody likes the music we like? How am I supposed to sleep at night when no one likes the music we write? Record buying public, we hate them — this is Art Brut versus Satan!' ('Demons Out!'). So many times we heard people implying these questions in cryptic, convoluted forms; it is so refreshing that these guys at least do not beat around the bush like everyone else.

Whether the last song, 'Mysterious Bruises', deserves its seven minute length — an obviously in­tentional and provocative breach of the aesthetic norm — is debatable, given that it is essentially a repetitive account of the protagonist's unhappy party experience ('I've had one Zirtec, two Advil, with a drink that made me feel invincible'). But it did manage to supply the album's second-most quoted paraphrase: 'I fought the floor, and the floor won!' (The first-most is 'Cool your warm jets, Brian Eno!' off 'Slap Dash For No Cash').

So Art Brut Vs. Satan is hardly a kind of record one would use as a bait for new fans, but it works fine as a device to re-encourage the old ones and earn the band a couple extra critical po­ints. If these guys need to go on, and if you need to hear more of them, the album is a surefire thumbs up album; and if they do not, and if you do not, either, you should have stopped reading this a long time ago anyway.

Art Brut: It's A Bit Complicated

ART BRUT: IT'S A BIT COMPLICATED (2007)

1) Pump Up The Volume; 2) Direct Hit; 3) St. Pauli; 4) People In Love; 5) Late Sunday Evening; 6) I Will Survive; 7) Post Soothing Out; 8) Blame It On The Trains; 9) Sound Of Summer; 10) Nag Nag Nag Nag; 11) Jealous Guy.

Second time around, the exact same groove will obviously not sound as fresh. With the element of surprise and shock gone, and nothing else taking its place, It's A Bit Complicated is a bit com­plicated to adore the same way it was possible to adore Bang Bang. As clever as Argos and company show themselves to be, too much cleverness can be dangerous; and since these guys' main strength is in their lyrics rather than in their loins, I mean, riffs — once the joke starts get­ting old, they are all over and done with.

And the joke does start getting a little old. At the very least, it starts getting less obvious and in your face, meaning that I, for instance, have to strain myself somewhat to get it, and what good is an Art Brut album where it is necessary to strain oneself to get it? 'Formed a band, we formed a band!' and 'My little brother just discovered rock'n'roll!' were ready-made slogans with near-uni­versal appeal, immediately forcing you to acknowledge the band's presence. On It's A Bit Com­plicated, in contrast, nothing is ready-made, you have to cook it yourself. Thirty three minutes, high temperature, constant survey and flipping required, results not guaranteed.

Some riffs are good — the anthemic U2-ish line that drives 'Nag Nag Nag Nag', the cute love theme of 'People In Love', the brutal stomp of 'St. Pauli' — but the overall quality is certainly not enough to make this any more stupendous musically than Bang Bang. As for the lyrics, they seem way too frequently to drift into more intimate territory, focused more on the grotesque sides of personal relationships than on the absurdities of society ('Jealous Guy', 'Late Sunday Evening'), etc. — and it does not help much that they continue strictly adhering to the principle of repeating each chorus (and, sometimes, each verse) as many times as it takes to get the Gumby effect. But it is not nearly as funny when the repeated chorus sounds something like 'There's nothing that's been done that can't be undone / You were sick, now you're better, there's work to be done' or 'People in love lie around and get fat / I didn't want us to end up like that' (admittedly, the latter is funny, but lots of things in life are funny).

Overall, this is not a good sign: the lyrics are more boring, the melodies are not improving, and the groove has been carved in stone. I do not want to officially tag this as a good or bad album, because, although on the surface it is not very pleasant, the Art Brut vibe still sort of transcends the line between good and evil — like one of their role models, the Ramones, whose only album worth of sacred admiration is the first one, but who never really ever made a truly bad record be­cause you could not put down or corrupt the vibe. But perhaps it's a bit too complicated, after all.

Art Brut: Bang Bang Rock & Roll

ART BRUT: BANG BANG ROCK & ROLL (2005)

1) Formed A Band; 2) My Little Brother; 3) Emily Kane; 4) Rusted Guns Of Milan; 5) Modern Art; 6) Good Week­end; 7) Bang Bang Rock And Roll; 8) Fight; 9) Moving To L. A.; 10) Bad Weekend; 11) Stand Down; 12) 18,000 Lira.

If the lovable Gumbies from Monty Python's Flying Circus decided to get together and play rock'n'roll, they would, most likely, sound like Art Brut — not forgetting that behind the retarded characters of the Gumbies hide the hyper-intellectual personalities of the Pythonites, and that be­hind the carefully staged low-class dumbness of Art Brut hide the personalities of... who are these guys anyway?

Obviously, garage- and punk-rock are still alive and kicking, and will be so until there are no more honestly aggressive, but smart young people left in the world (MTV is working hard on sol­ving that problem, but give it a bit more time to come up with the ultimate solution). But it is not every day that a punk band with a fresh new twist comes along, and this here is definitely a fresh new twist. Instead of joining the usual crowd of deadly serious anti-social rockers who hardly know the difference between a guitar and a Tommy gun, Art Brut play it with the utmost in irony ('it's not irony', lead singer Eddie Argos objects on one of the tracks, only further convincing everyone for miles around that it is).

Whenever people start talking about Art Brut, they cannot help from spurting out tons of lyrical quotes — understandably, because this band is mainly about the lyrics. The music is run-of-the-mill garage noise, a bit more complex than the Ramones and very nicely retro-arranged, but no­thing to write home about (and some of the riffs are just irreverently copped from golden oldies, e. g. the intro to 'Good Weekend' is 'Let's Dance' by the Monkees and suchlike). Lead vocalist Eddie Argos, in age-honed punk fashion, never ever sings, but just speaks or shouts out the words. Alto­gether, they synthesize a good drive, but good drive alone hardly suffices to throw you over the threshold; you have to feed it with great melodies or great attitude.

Well, they do have great attitude. Normally, a single chorus line shouted over and over again is guaranteed to stick in the brain, but the process is painful and even shameful if it is a bland, banal, hyperseriously taken chorus line. However, how can you go wrong with 'Formed a band! We formed a band! Look at us — we formed a band!' Or with 'My! Little! Brother! Just Discovered Rock And Roll! My! Little! Brother! Just Discovered Rock And Roll! There's A Noise In His Head And He's Out Of Control!' (Sung over a clone of the melody of The Clash's 'London Cal­ling', no less). Or with 'Modern Art! Makes Me! Want To Rock Out! Modern Art! Makes Me! Want To Rock Out!' Or with 'I can't stand the sound of the — Velvet Underground!' (Backing vocals go 'white light, white heat!' at the same time).

This is my dutiful share of the album's lyrics, but believe me, there is much more than that. Not coincidentally, Art Brut attracted the admiring attention of Pixies' founder Frank Black, who even went on to produce one of their albums — their groove is wedged in the tradition that covers the ground between the Stooges and the Ramones, but their absurdism and irony far surpasses the basic level of the Ramones and is, indeed, much better aligned with the post-modern excesses of the Pixies. Except that Frank Black you could accuse of being «pretentious», while these guys are completely unassailable from such an angle. At least in the narrow sense of the term: if by «pretentious» we simply mean «claiming to have something important to say», then Art Brut are, by all means, quite pretentious.

But they really do have something important to say. They may seem like they are singing about themselves, yet, in fact, they are singing about everybody else. Irony is their deadly weapon, with which they exterminate their dim-witted competition: bands that do suppose they are the shit just because they'd mustered the intelligence to get together ('Formed A Band'), street gangs whose norm and ideal of significant communicative expression is a good punch in the nose ('Fight'), braindead sex-obsessed teens ('Good Weekend', which includes what is arguably the band's most oft quoted line — 'I've seen her naked TWICE!'), and what is likely Art Brut's primary target — the hipster crowd, which they hate with my own kind of passion ('Modern Art'; 'Moving To LA', about 'drinking Hennessy with Morrissey' etc.).

Certainly this is not a «masterpiece»: it is way too dependent on its inspirations and way too limi­ted in its goals to advance the band to some sort of top rank. But its limited goals are masterfully achieved, and its thirty minutes, particularly if you are paying close attention to whatever Eddie has got to say to you, fly by almost unnoticed. Many people have a soft spot for headbanging al­bums that make fun of headbangers — this is possibly the best representative of the genre in the «noughties», and it happens to perfectly fit in with my conception of good humor, which automa­tically guarantees an intellectual-and-emotional thumbs up.