Here's a puzzle for you; what do you get if cross Justin Warfield – the rapper from the genius Bug Powder Dust by Bomb The Bass, and Adam Bravin – a DJ from sunbaked Los Angeles?
Chances are you aren't thinking of a sleekly gloomy album that rips-off both The Killers and Joy Division in equal measure, but that's exactly what She Wants Revenge – the new album by Warfield and Bravin under the guise of the band She Wants Revenge – is. And creepy isn't the word.
She Wants Revenge is a band that's easy to take the piss out of – any band who can sing about high heels and stockings as if they're a sign of an impending apocalypse is an easy band to take the piss out of, to be fair – but the album She Wants Revenge is an interesting listen, like the self-consciously dark flipside to Hot Fuss by The Killers.
Musically, both She Wants Revenge and The Killers live in the same house, where New Order and Joy Division rub up against Depeche Mode, but where The Killers were all about getting ready to go out on a Friday night, She Wants Revenge has more to do with with staggering back on Sunday morning, broken and fractured and covered in other people's blood, not really knowing who you are any more. Well, in their heads they are, at least.
In reality, She Wants Revenge sounds like two people trying really hard to make an album that sounds as much like Joy Division as possible. It's all there, from the clanging guitars to the post-punk basslines to the dramatically intoned vocals about S&M. Can the man who once rapped about he could "Shock your ass like a faulty vibrator" now be droning "give me the safe word and take my hand/ and smack me in the mouth, my love"? Turns out that he can – and you'll either love it or hate it. Needless to say, this depends on how much you like Joy Division.
She Wants Revenge have basically got two settings – the spooky, 1980s songs about having rough sex that take themselves so seriously we want to tickle them with a feather under their armpits, and the songs where She Wants Revenge briefly unclench. And, since the former lot more or less consists of one song identically repeated five or six times, it's only the latter that really shines. Of these, the Sunglasses At Night pastiche Spend The Night has the most momentum, but it's matched by I Don't Wanna Fall In Love – which bizarrely sounds like Bis – and Brian Eno-esque instrumental Disconnect.
Most confusing of all is the hidden track that hides away on track 66. It's confusing because it sounds exactly the same as every single other song by She Wants Revenge, and hardly worth trudging through 50 tracks of silence to get to. She Wants Revenge is one of those albums that sonically impresses your head, but you can never let into your heart. And we get the feeling that She Wants Revenge prefer it that way.
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[story by Stuart Heritage]