Labels: Thrill Jockey
Review by: Captain Fidanza
This album was apparently inspired by the artist watching six episodes of Beverley Hills 90210 every day for several months whilst sleeping on his friend’s sofa. Now whereas you would be forgiven for assuming this sort of behaviour would lead to an album containing little more than a human being screaming loudly in a locked room, whilst attendants attempted to harpoon them with sedatives, it is in fact quite different.
I’ve not seen 90210 since the early-nineties when it arrived amongst much ballyhoo on the ITV Saturday evening television schedules. “Oh look,” it seemed to be saying, “look how wonderful and glamorous and wealthy and brilliant the people who live here are,” and of course, by definition, “look how rubbish and ugly and poor and shit you are because you don’t live in America and drive a Ferrari to school.” My ill-mannered response to this vulgar display of privilege was to boycott the show completely and refuse to engage in any discussion of which of the woman ones I most wanted to enjoy sexual congress with “” the blonde one or the brown-haired one or the other blonde one or the one with blonde hair.
Plus there was that man in it who was about thirty-five and he was supposed to be at school. Fuck off Beverly Hills, you and your fucking 90210; unless Axel Foley is in town, I’m not interested in you whatsoever.
Coincidentally, though we grew up many thousands of miles apart and experienced the programme in separate decades, the musician responsible for this album seems to have had a rather similar reaction to me, to the gorgeous, wealthy arseholes that undoubtedly populate the “rebooted” franchise these days. This is the music that soundtracks the, “home invasion” nightmares of the wealthy and culturally under-nourished.
Whilst listening, I took great joy in imagining Peter Stormare slowly feeding the people responsible for 90210 into a wood chipper whilst the music from this album was performed live nearby.