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The Soft Pink Truth, "Do You Want New Wave or Do you want..."
On his latest collection as The Soft Pink Truth, Drew Daniel attemptsto answer the famous question posed by The Minutemen while negotiatinga postmodern marriage of heaven and hell.Tigerbeat 6
A record comprised of tencover songs, nine of which revisit some of Daniel's favorite moments inthe annals of English punk rock and American hardcore, transformingtwo-minute angry screeds into sleazy, hedonistic electro-disco. Whileit's fairly obvious that Daniel has retained much of his affection forthis music from his youth spent in the Louisville, Kentucky hardcorepunk scene, it's equally obvious that Daniel is aware that he isessentially negating the substance of punk and hardcore protest bygrafting the lyrics onto hyper-sexualized, druggy dance music. MinorThreat's "Out Of Step" remains a classically explicit statement ofpurpose for the straight edge DC hardcore movement, but SPT's versioncompletely castrates the original's ascetic stance, adding layers ofsampled sex moans and laughable snippets from a "Stop Smoking in 30Days" LP. The central question posed by Do You Want New Waveappears to be this: Can these fiercely political songs be takenseriously when they can be so easily stripped of meaning?Anti-capitalism and anarchism abound on the album, with People Like Us'Vicki Bennett providing vocals for a version of Crass' "Do They Us aLiving?" from the epochal Feeding of the 5000 that sounds likeits being covered by The Normal. But the famously confrontationaljeremiad, juxtaposed with digitized whipcracks and squelching synths,ends up in the realm of the absurd, a series of hopelessly radicalizedleft-wing rants that seem downright quaint in the age of prosperity andTony Blair. It seems clear that Drew Daniel's intention is to have thelistener question the political substance of these songs, as he slylydisarms them of their power by transforming them into slick dance clubfodder for a generation that can't be bothered to think. In fact, itmay have been SPT's plan all along to force us to think about thesedecades-old blasts of political aggression, and by removing the loud,primitive noise guitar and chaotic pummeling, the listener receives noassistance and must take the lyrics on their own terms. This isespecially effective on more obscure cuts like the mashup ofRudimentary Peni's "Media Person" (which Daniel mistakenly renames"Media Friend") and "V.S.B.," transforming RP's savagely desolategoth-punk into a relentlessly hypnotic MDMA groove that matches JeremyScott's vocal delivery perfectly. The deliciously blasphemous "Poet'sConfession" from electro-punks Nervous Gender ("Jesus was a cocksuckingJew from Galilee/Jesus was just like me/A homosexual nymphomaniac") isturned into a dark, queasy acid rave-up worthy of LSD-era Coil,serving only to intensify the song's already terrifying nihilism.Daniel has a good time turning The Angry Samoans' miniature homophobicdiatribe "Homo-sexual" into a high-velocity rip-roaring sing-along forrivetheads, making it even more difficult to figure whether or not theoriginal's intolerant hate-mongering was meant to be satire. Like anygood punk album, SPT's Do You Want New Wave clocks in at a slim35 minutes, but it doesn't waste a second, turning what should havebeen a patently ridiculous concept into an incredibly, infectiouslyentertaining album.
A record comprised of tencover songs, nine of which revisit some of Daniel's favorite moments inthe annals of English punk rock and American hardcore, transformingtwo-minute angry screeds into sleazy, hedonistic electro-disco. Whileit's fairly obvious that Daniel has retained much of his affection forthis music from his youth spent in the Louisville, Kentucky hardcorepunk scene, it's equally obvious that Daniel is aware that he isessentially negating the substance of punk and hardcore protest bygrafting the lyrics onto hyper-sexualized, druggy dance music. MinorThreat's "Out Of Step" remains a classically explicit statement ofpurpose for the straight edge DC hardcore movement, but SPT's versioncompletely castrates the original's ascetic stance, adding layers ofsampled sex moans and laughable snippets from a "Stop Smoking in 30Days" LP. The central question posed by Do You Want New Waveappears to be this: Can these fiercely political songs be takenseriously when they can be so easily stripped of meaning?Anti-capitalism and anarchism abound on the album, with People Like Us'Vicki Bennett providing vocals for a version of Crass' "Do They Us aLiving?" from the epochal Feeding of the 5000 that sounds likeits being covered by The Normal. But the famously confrontationaljeremiad, juxtaposed with digitized whipcracks and squelching synths,ends up in the realm of the absurd, a series of hopelessly radicalizedleft-wing rants that seem downright quaint in the age of prosperity andTony Blair. It seems clear that Drew Daniel's intention is to have thelistener question the political substance of these songs, as he slylydisarms them of their power by transforming them into slick dance clubfodder for a generation that can't be bothered to think. In fact, itmay have been SPT's plan all along to force us to think about thesedecades-old blasts of political aggression, and by removing the loud,primitive noise guitar and chaotic pummeling, the listener receives noassistance and must take the lyrics on their own terms. This isespecially effective on more obscure cuts like the mashup ofRudimentary Peni's "Media Person" (which Daniel mistakenly renames"Media Friend") and "V.S.B.," transforming RP's savagely desolategoth-punk into a relentlessly hypnotic MDMA groove that matches JeremyScott's vocal delivery perfectly. The deliciously blasphemous "Poet'sConfession" from electro-punks Nervous Gender ("Jesus was a cocksuckingJew from Galilee/Jesus was just like me/A homosexual nymphomaniac") isturned into a dark, queasy acid rave-up worthy of LSD-era Coil,serving only to intensify the song's already terrifying nihilism.Daniel has a good time turning The Angry Samoans' miniature homophobicdiatribe "Homo-sexual" into a high-velocity rip-roaring sing-along forrivetheads, making it even more difficult to figure whether or not theoriginal's intolerant hate-mongering was meant to be satire. Like anygood punk album, SPT's Do You Want New Wave clocks in at a slim35 minutes, but it doesn't waste a second, turning what should havebeen a patently ridiculous concept into an incredibly, infectiouslyentertaining album. samples:
