Frequently Bought Together
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Listen to Samples and Buy MP3s
|
Product Description
Review
The man who formed Felt – spindly 80s guitar-pop beauties who recorded for Cherry Red and Creation – and then Denim’s 70s glam-rock escapade added a bubblegum twist with Go-Kart Mozart’s 1999 debut LP, Instant Wigwam and Igloo Mixture. Even in the 21st century, the Mozart, as Lawrence would never call them, are defiantly sticking with it.
Thematically, this 17-track album is, he says, “a rag bag of contemptuous attitudes”. That’s contempt for art, sex, country, “and most especially contempt for the audience that might be listening”.
Perhaps Lawrence has some reserve contempt for people who recycle the past to ladle irony over our lack of progress and character. But then Lawrence is of sufficient unique, maverick, perverse character to make Go-Kart Mozart so much more than that.
He is, above all, funny, and there is no better song-titler on Earth. Blowin’ in a Secular Breeze, White Stilettos in the Sand and Spunky Axe are just three classics, illuminating a world of cartoon emotion halfway between saucy and sordid.
Your appreciation of Hot Dog’s music depends on your taste and tolerance for the fag-end (not a criticism) of glam; not Bowie/Roxy art-pop, but the junk-shop ‘velvet tinmine’ approach of Hector, Iron Virgin, Spiv, Flintlock. For example, Come on You Lot takes Hot Butter’s synth popcorn to the football terraces.
Secular Breeze recalls Brian and Michael’s Matchstick Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs. Spunky Axe is best: a chugging boogie with Lawrence’s best cockernee vocal and a coda of delirious whining guitars and cat impersonations. Most bizarrely, once its intro is done, Lawrence Takes Over is a perfect impersonation of Suede.
Hot Dog Streets is a great singles album straining to be unleashed. But no matter if it doesn’t breed hits. There is only one Lawrence, this is his gospel, and roll on the next chapter.
--Daniel Ross
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
CD Description
Customer Reviews
The music mag Uncut describes the album as "his richest, most enjoyable and conceptually solid record since Denim's '92 debut Back In Denim... his lyrics are a joy ...One could conclude that the reason bands rip off Felt and not Go-Kart Mozart is because most bands lack imagination... excellent." A pity that they simultaneously follow the party line by saying, in the same breath, that it's hard to take him seriously when they have just given manifest reasons for doing so. Where was On the Hot Dog Streets (love the title!) in Uncut's top 10 of the year? Lawrence is too young seems to be the answer. I think this is better than anything he did as either Felt and Denim and approaches the level of his masterpiece, Go-Kart Mozart's masterpiece "Instant Wigwam and Igloo Mixture". That one got him written off for good as eccentric when it is in fact avant-garde brilliance with a wonderful common touch.
Now to get back to those songs...
Yet the pervading sense of a man of of certain age struggling with his feelings towards women and the past is sometimes embodied lyrically in a startlingly fierce frankness which is not to be taken glibly. Are the 'uncomfortable moments' (as one reviewer puts it) simply the result of an attempt to be honest about a range of contradictory feelings (who among us would escape raised eyebrows if all our momentary thoughts were documented publicly?), a challenge to unthinking moral conformity, or evidence of a descent into reactionary attitudes? (See the reviews in the Quietus and the Guardian.) Lawrence has the great merit of making you think carefully, if not warily, about what he's up to. But maybe this is not one for the kids.
But this is Lawrence's best work for 20 years, since Back in Denim in fact. Read more
Some of this has taken 15 years to record, and therefore very occasionally shows its age (a Mike... Read more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Listmania!
|
|
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
