It's only appropriate that last year brought us new releases from both Suede and Blur. These band's 1999 releases functioned as public commentary on how each band's frontman -- Brett Anderson and Damon Albarn respectively -- would take their state of relations with Justine Frischmann, debutante and figurehead of Elastica. And both albums can't help but serve as preambles to and instruction manuals for hearing Elastica's newest project, The Menace. For however many Elastica fans there are still around these days, listening to The Menace will be like sitting front-and center on an aural dual between Suede and Blur -- the album flip-flops through the cosmic, contemplative, sonic tensions of 13 with the free-for-all, drug induced stuporific rallying of Head Music.
The Menace is the band's debut album in fast-forward. The concoction: Pack a blender full of the band's signature devices -- repetitive, sometimes pointless but thoroughly enjoyable lyrics, ejaculatory songs, lush solos which wow despite their technical lack; spike it with fire, glut, and symmetry and sheer rawness; and press "puree" -- you've got an album-cocktail that gets you so rocked, you don't care much about the ingredients at all. It's like the musical version of the Jetsons -- a impossible future rendered in a myopic past, hand-rendered drawings of digital horizons, still amusing and compelling even if a bit silly, and still kicking after all these years.
Case in point: track 3, "How He Spelled Elastica Man," the best, and shortest, song on the album (take that, "Tender!"!, say Frischmann and her crew). Only MC Esher could make could fathom a more precarious, paradoxical construct. It's: 1) a blurting coda to the album's opening trio of ejaculatory, hypertext songs. 2) an exercise in musical faux pas, complete with self-referential spelling and football stadium rahs. 3) the culmination of Brett Anderson's Fall obsession, actually featuring Mark E. Smith cameos 4) itching, sardonic synthesizer capitulation, like a demon's Candyland, made more acute by unison guitar and vocal blats. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to laugh at the end or defenestrate myself, or both. Cut to track 4, "Image Change" -- an off-putting, lullaby-sedative -- the music a technically savvy babysitter might program to soothe the wilds of ornery kids.
This album won't save any lives, or be sampled for that many mixed tapes. Mostly the people who'll get into it will be a few eager-beaver rock critics (like yours truly), a handful of lucky converts, and those Elastica fans who've been patiently waiting for whatever the band would put out. But, without a doubt, Elastica will be a menace with this album, airplay or no. Go to their concert buzzed on something, and chant with Justine from "Just The Way I Like It": "I'm living all right, I'm doing okay... I've got a good idea."
