If you’re willing to ignore the ever so slightly grating irony and the less than subtle political tracts, you might enjoy it. Just don’t be brave enough to venture beyond the first four or five tracks on the album.
With everyone from Peaches, Miss Kittin (also featuring on the excellent new release from T. Raumschmiere), Le Tigre, Nicola from Adult, and Talking Head’s Tina Weymouth, you’d expect this to be a good album and short of the regrettable subtitles for the hard of thinking, it is, a great album. Kind of…
Beginning life as a fake band at the Munich art academy in 1997 under the name of Seppi Bar, Kiki Moorse (Germany), Melissa Logan (New York) and Alex Murray-Leslie (Australia) came together to cement an international, “do it yourself“ mishmash of styles and approaches. Espousing a kind of ‘art that is for everyone’ ethos and a quirky kind of disregard for rules, Chicks On Speed have perfected a japing kind of high-brow.
With their glue and staple-gun approach to recording and singing, you’d be forgiven for thinking the girls are just busking it. But for all their limitations musically, conceptually they’re pretty tight. And it’s here at this ‘high art, low art’ crossroads that we find them on ’99 Cents’ – both a celebration and vilification of ‘Pop Capitalism’ – an album devoted to cheap art. But be warned: this is not just any old group; this is a pressure group and you may be feeling more than a little pressured by the end of it all.
Griping aside, the album showcases perhaps the most impressive and ‘instant’ first four tracks on an album for months. ‘Shooting From The Hip’ with it’s cantankerous, fuzzy guitars, and stuttering robotica is like Ladytron bursting out of the shop bag on amphetamines whilst ‘We Don’t Play Guitars’ featuring Peaches is a mouthy, vengeful stomp of a record. Next up is the reworking of the Tom Tom Club classic, ‘Wordy Rappinghood’ and the delicious Berliner slur of the unlikely sounding ‘Coventry’. And after a couple of duds, the excellence prevails with the velvety ‘Culture Vulture’ and the nonchalant poptastik techno of ‘Love Life’ – rivalling almost anything put out by the Human League or Tom Tom Club respectively.
A little too clever for it’s own good, but occasionally excellent.