This review from Stephen Slaybaugh put a smile on my face today. To be honest, I don’t know much about the album, but damn this is one pissed off review.
One of the perverse phenomena of recent years has been the rise of the Vice empire. Launched as a magazine endeavor documenting the cultural ephemera of the hip fashionista with a coke-crusted nose-in-the-air attitude, the Montreal company expanded into music, film, books and clothing. Also opening a string of boutiques, Vice?in a twist even more ironic than their fashion sense?is no longer cultural barometer but a self-perpetuating manufacturer of hip commodities, simultaneously digesting and pooping out trends to sell back to the lemmings who eat up this shit.
Perhaps most indicative of their music division?s style-before-substance roster is Death from Above 1979, a duo sporting correctly prescribed haircuts, T-shirts, jeans and even a mustache for good measure.
The band?s debut, You?re a Woman, I?m a Machine, is a turgid farting of prevailing winds, a paper-thin facsimile of vogue guitar scratching and gutter disco beats matched to inane lyrical self-indulgences. Preened as steely and dangerous, this sort of musical masturbation is only scary for its inherent narcissism, and for the fact that?with the right marketing?someone might mistake it for being good.