(from beat-sketching, July '03) / home / reviews index
The Lollies - 'Taste'
(Fortune & Glory)
This Ameri-Canadian girl-boy group obviously knows their pop contexts;
without such knowledge they'd have been unable to choose a name that
fits so snug like plastic wrap on their sugar-sweet sound. The lyrics
could come from a girl's mag problem page with Morrissey as its agony
uncle - capturing a great silly rush of a crush and scanning it perfectly.
'Office Romance' canters along at a pace ripe for comedy. "Oh,
when he prints, I can't relax!" it giggles self-consciously
- a good thing. In between the infatuations with boys in boring bands
and the more serious stories like 'Call the Girls' are the necessary
reflex put-downs. "stuff your big, massive, fuck-off attitude!"
With a band like the Lollies it's clear that lyrics and the attitude are as important as the music, or sometimes outweigh it: the narrative leads the songs as it does often for Blondie or Squeeze, or the soundtrack from Grease. That's a hallmark of classic pop. This balance doesn't stop the music being interesting in itself - amongst the ubiquitous silly little keyboards the Lollies have a really nice guitar sound, one on 'Call the Girls' that I can only describe as a harmonic sort of "bwarf!". 'Jonestown Mascara' is a surf tune featuring Chris T-T and Blusher on handclaps! 'Taste' is more pop than Kenickie but with just as much sass; 'Flavah of the Week' like Helen Love with more oomph. Post-post-ironic, it's ok to joke again about the fickle disco tart that is the music industry ("My indie cred is a bit abused, now I'm modelling for Dazed & Confused"). But you can only write songs about the music industry if you're outside of it (Robbie Williams isn't very good at subverting the system from within). So the Lollies have split now anyway.
