Live The Dream, Stainless Style--80's Disco Fundamentalist Auto Opera from Neon Neon

Charismatic Maverick Who Was Known To Start Static

Delorean is dead. Long live Delorean. His DMC-12 automobile line may have failed like the Edsel, but John DeLorean will be forever memorialized, originally by product placement in the Back To The Future trilogy, and now in Stainless Style, a magnificent concept album by Neon Neon, a pairing of Super Furry frontman Gruff Rhys and Cincinnati Producer/DJ Boom Bip. Stainless Style was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2008.

If you are a person who throws "80's parties", or are just an 80's maniac, slipping on your Hammer Genie pants for a quick trip to the supermarket, this is the place to be. If you are 80's Amish, refusing to believe that time has passed, Stainless Style is the soundtrack to your delusion. And if you are American you probably have an unhealthy obsession with cars and technology, or you know people who do. I know I've been dancing to this non-stop in my underground post-election bunker since yesterday. I was watching the Star Trek reunion episode of Futurama  where Welshy, the Cymry replacement for Scotty on this show, gets incinerated by the Alien Trekkie. And apparently that is my inspiration for doing a bit on Neon Neon.

This album is not joke. If you played someone a song like I Lust U without explaining the provenance, they might very well say, "I remember this song. I used to dance to this all the time back in 1983." Gruff Rhys, who took a sabbatical from Welsh wunderband SFA for this project croons to great effect on this album. Of course, Super Furry Animals is a band that is hugely popular in Europe, but has never quite broke it in America. I still think that they are so talented that they can do pretty much anything. I believe they have the brains and ability to make an album on a par with the legendary bands they obviously idolize. I don't know much about Boom Bip, but on Stainless his arrangements are peerless. I'm not talking about copying here;
I'm talking about working within a genre. The synth riffs are creative, the beats are constantly changing, something you don't hear often in dance music where functionality trumps variety.

I Told Her On Alderaan is a classic 80's style synth dance pop, with vocodered chorus and hyper catchy hooks. And of course there is the Star Wars reference. As befitting a concept album about failed automaker John Delorean such 80's isms run through the whole album. Both stylistically and contextually. There are songs nominally about Hollywood icons Michael Douglas and Raquel Welch, but in a lot of ways they reflect attitudes and fashions of the day. There are also songs like the Prince homage Sweat Shop, and Belfast which fill in biographical checkpoints. DeLorean's autos were originally manufactured a few miles outside Belfast. Songs touch on themes like desire for fame and power, lust, advertising, out of control consumerism.

Alderaan Calling from faraway Wales

Luxury Pool is a brilliant song with  rapper Fatlip toasting DeLorean as a player out of Detroit, using rap conventions as a metaphor for the auto icon's rise to fame and fortune. I Lust U is another winner, featuring a top notch performance from Welsh artist Cat LeBon. The synth riff on this is just too perfect to describe. Though Alderaan is the clear hit on the album, I Lust U is my favorite on an album of favorites. This album is a great 80's dance album--they really pull the whole project off flawlessly. If you look at the song titles, you might think that the album is a jokey send up, but I think that DeLorean is actually treated sympathetically, and they are trying to seriously create a sonic and visual time capsule. There is an undercurrent of sadness to a lot of the songs, as would be expected of an album about a failed visionary.

Musically there are so many touchstones here. New Order, Genesis, Pet Shop Boys, Beach Boys, Kyrie Eleison, Julian Cope, and probably a lot more beyond my recognition. I can only imagine how much work it took to put this project together. I definitely have a lot of admiration for Boom Bip, and I definitely have an itch to hear some of his other projects. From what I've heard, there probably will never be a followup Stainless Style. I can understand--despite the commercial and critical success, where can you go from here? Hopefully maybe they will come up with an entirely new project to create. I would think with this duo, the sky might not be the limit.



Dwi wedi meddwi'n chwil!!