(from beat-sketching, July 03) / home / reviews index
Sneeze 'Lost the
Spirit to Rock & Roll' (Fire Records)
Here's eighteen songs of homespun funk and soul from a couple of Aussie
slackers and their mates. It's a woozy old collection with a lot going
on - congas top and bottom, cruising on the Rhodes, Hammond and strings
and a whole bit of brass - so the arrangements are full, but also light
(like, sunny). Boys and girls harmonize falsettos in the same way that
chimpanzees laugh. They have plenty to laugh about, or not; the same
old hazy barroom blues of love across the sexes, across the sex changers,
and across the consulting room table ('Too Much Man To Be My Woman',
'Doctor of Love' etc.). Sneeze have a party atmosphere on a song about
a break-up. So yeah it's meant to be funny in parts, not intelligent.
"I'm gonna sit at the back of the class, and check out the ass!"
For every tongue in cheek there is a head in its hands, and you'd expect nothing less from Evan Dando's old songwriting partners, tripping over themselves to call out "my darling..". Lovely mid-paced honey pop. This album's sweet. I'd like to pour milk on it and eat it as a decadent breakfast. Because too much sugar is bad for you, right? I feel kind of shameful at buying Sugar Puffs myself, a bit like porn, though I'll take them if offered by other people. Don't worry, for every laddish joke there is plenty of righteously dilapidated soul. Even the title track can't support a sprint for more than an opening bar, and it doesn't need to do anymore. Lost the spirit to rock and roll? "Rock and roll is just the blues sped up, anyway…"
It could be the soundtrack to a
great drinking party, sequenced to end when you pass out.
