Réalistes (Milou Studios)
Words: Miss AMP
You may think your reviewer too libidinally charged and you’d be correct, but make me give a fuck: the boy-child* on the CD case of "Réalistes" is all-fucken-right; a dark-haired sensitive indie Mr Thing with black dork glasses and bitten lips, just like your papa never warned you about. There are torn-up typewritten manifestoes and old filmic dudes on the shiny sleeve, all restrained cut’n’paste black’n’white. Yum for design!
‘Course you know the record’s just gonna be horrible schmindie noise because life is never that good but what the hey, there’s a big heart behind these small breasts so you press play anyway, and guess the fuck what, it’s GOOD! It’s indie like C86, like blaring guitars and tambourines and handclaps** and boy-girl*** harmonies, sweet like candy of the psycho variety. I don’t know nuffin about production (or anything else) but it sounds like it’s mixed low, like bottom-of-the-mudflats low, or somewhere deep in the earth’s core, but they’re trying to get out! Stabbing bits of guitar; passion, noise, punk, "Nothing ever happens to people like me", do doo do, do doo do, do doo doo!
Remember when you’d go down the indie disco when you were 15 and they’d play Pixies, Mudhoney, Dinasour Jr, and you’d feel like you’d finally come home and returned to your kind? This is that. I don’t know, there’s a lot of hyperbole, every reviewer wants to convince you that this is the record that will change your life: but hey, fuck those lo$ers and listen to ME! Have you got a heart, or 60s hair? Are you alive to love? Do you like to dance? Can you clap your hands? Does feedback thrill you like a touch to the thigh?
This record will wrap melodic fingers round your heart and kiss you on the lips like a rampant teenager. Take me!
* Not just a honey: Chris Apelgren plays drums for The Pattern, too!
** Provided by San Francisco gaylord indie darlings Aislers Set!
*** On track seven, "Ripped-up Suit", the girl is Kathleen Hanna!
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