The Boomtown Rats - A Tonic For The Troops
I'm slightly trepidatious about Skip's pick. Not that i won't like it, but he's surprisingly difficult to figure out. I guess that makes sense, if you could guess what the editor is thinking you wouldn't need an editor, would you? Alright, bring it, Skip says:
Get him something that's missing from a band's discography. Fill in the gaps.
Oh, yeah, totally how an editor would think. I was worried for nothing.
Oh. Oh no. The Boomtown Rats. Compy found their second album, A Tonic For The Troops. Oh boy.
Ok, i haven't heard it. I'm fairly sure i will like it, but i haven't been exactly forthcoming when it comes to the two albums i did review and the one i haven't reviewed. I loved The Fine Art of Surfacing, and their first album was great too, but there's a reason The Boomtown Rats aren't famous, and it's because The Boomtown Rats are offensive. I don't mean they use bad words (i love those), i don't mean they have questionable subject matter (i obviously love the dark side of everything), i mean Bob Geldoff is in your face repugnant, smarmy, vicious, and completely uncompromising. Jello Biafra is all those things and likably famous, so is Henry Rollins, even Maynard and Les Claypool live across the line from civilized conversation, but Bob makes them look like the cultured antagonists they really are. Johnny Rotten can't hold a candle to Bob Geldoff. Bob Geldoff is an offensive personality even the Thin White Duke would have to tip his hat around. I agree with him 4/5 of the time (that's 80% if you're fractionally challenged) and i'm still like "he said that, i didn't say that." Whatever it is, Bob Geldoff is being nasty about it. I haven't reviewed their 4th album because it's terrible, but i know this one isn't. It is, however, tough to talk about.
Hitler, suicide, euthanasia, the sheer terrible of being fully aware of your surroundings. Now, i'm rarely accused of being a shiny happy person because i'm totally as cynical, sarcastic, and introverted as anyone, but i also make a show of tempering that bile. Not Bob. If "sheeple" was a word in the late 70s, he'd use it to death as an insult to the people who say "sheeple."
Regardless, as an album this is pretty great. They reuse a couple songs from their first album, mostly because the concept let's them. The concept is hard to condense into a simple tag line, but it's all about how public appearance is a facade, polite society is a joke, everything is a lie, a placebo of trashy entertainment in the guise of intellectual fashion.
The thing you have to remember is that this is 1970s Dublin, only a few years removed from the bombings and the nastiest part of The Troubles. Dublin was not a wealthy, fashion forward city, and it's hard to believe anything when you're quite frankly poor, dirty, hungry, and exceedingly tired of car bombs and paramilitary violence.
Irish politics is a topic too big and confusing for 3 of me, so we'll leave that alone and go back to the music. Jangly New Wave energetic pop-rock, cynically vicious social commentary floating on top like oily scum. A rainbow of snark and misery! More than anything this album puts me in mind of an Oingo Boingo album in a bizarro universe where Danny Elfman isn't quirky or macabre, but just downright mean.
It occurs to me we've done something pretty interesting. Compy says it's not an Adventure Time, but we're bouncing back and forth from the UK to America in roughly chronological order, and so far it's reality sucks, escapist adventure fantasy, no seriously reality suuuuucks.... Why do i get the feeling the last album will be America in the 80s? Why do i get the feeling it will be exactly the opposite of everything i just said, a tonic for the troops in its own way? I mean, i totally believe this is all coincidence, it's not like C-lector listens to them while he's crate combing. We're just going through the stack in order, and they don't even know what record is next. It's like we live in a perpetual spiral of the same old arguments with new technology and different but equally silly looking pants. Alright, Carl. Surprise me....
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