Sexy Back, an apocalyptic waste of Fail

 

9 o'clock Nasty are my friends. Sometimes you need to be a true friend and tell them their song is shit. Today I must be that friend. In doing so I hope they will continue to visit me. Their bubble must be popped.

There are all manner of strange sayings and idioms in English. True, in my native languages we have them too, but the anglo-saxon phrasebook is long and useful. The one I should like to deploy today is "You Cannot Put Lipstick on a Pig."

Clearly you can, but it would be inadvisable, probably cruel and futile. Hold that thought reader. We are doing our research together here.

A band can transform and develop a great song into something new. I like the 9 o'clock Nasty version of Terror Couple Kill Colonel for example. It is not a remake it is a reimagining. It has the same notes, the same words but it is a new piece of art. But it is building on a good foundation.

The Nasty Boys attack Sexy Back with their usual flair and dazzlingly unaware confidence. They twist and throw shapes of darkness over the original karaoke beat. There are moments I cannot deny of genuine menace and power as guitars crackle over an insistent bass and deranged psycho-sexual lament. But you cannot take a song that is fundamentally flawed and somehow fix it by adding a layer of majesty.

I understand that the band did have a very nice email from Justin Timberlake's management company and have drunkenly reconstructed that into the fiction of him being a fan of the group, a mentor and so on.

He is the willing pig in their constructed universe of whimsy.

But to slather lipstick on him is not the answer.

No Pete, really. Put the lipstick down.

This song is a fundamentally flawed effort. Virtuoso skills and blazing talent applied to failed flimsy dance nonsense.

I hope they try hard to reinvent themselves in the next release from their dark retreat.