Bobby Conn – The Golden Age

Label: Thrill Jockey Format: CD,LP

Welcome to the end of the world. With civilization on the brink of destruction, and all those Biblical prophecies starting to look not quite so funny, the inimitable Bobby Conn bounds back onto the scene, perversely enough eschewing the eschatological apocalypses of Rise Up! and giving us an album of (among many other things), good time sleazy RAWK’n’RAWL!!! Yeah!

Coming on like a camp Lou Reed, or a butch Prince, the boy Conn kicks in with “A Taste Of Luxury”, a narcotic swoop through Jason Pierce‘s Velvet Underground collection, bombastic strings never quite hiding the Garage guitar strum below. It’s pleasant enough, though fucked. Then, however, the true madness begins with “Angels”, a tale of drug-induced psychosis and attempted suicide that starts with a kind of laid-back strut punctuated by Bobby’s whoops and drawl, then a Funk bridge gives way to a sleazy grind thang , the whole finally building to a literally angelic conclusion, as all the instruments that have been so restrained for so long get pissed off and decided to do their thing simultaneously. Elsewhere it’s as much of a mish-mash, “The Best Years Of Our Lives”‘ (un)easy listening (“And we’ll be golfin’/For our charity/Playin’ Bingo with our memories” deserves mentioning just for its gratuitous Bingo reference) sitting alongside “You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby”‘s transformation from the intro to Nick Cave‘s “The Carny” to all manner of other genres (complete with Velvets-esque lyrics about “skin-popping heroin under your desk”, “New York City/you got my luggage/but I got your gun”, and the classic “Your mother’s a beauty at 39/She took me downstairs for some blow that blew my mind”) by way of music that should really accompany a cartoon castle of some kind… (maybe Cloppa? I don’t know), then “Pumper”‘s all-out Metal assault and “Whores”‘ sordid charm.

There’s nothing here quite as immediately catchy as Rise Up!’s “United Nations (Under The Rule Of Satan)”, but after a couple of listens the whole album gains the kind of familiarity you’d expect of the Velvets or The Beatles – you know all these songs, you just don’t remember consciously attaching your brain to them. First listen you’ll think it’s pretty good, after three it’s indispensable. Bobby Conn, the world’s premier Judeo-Christian edutainer, seems to have abandoned prophesying the end of the world, and decided that if it’s gonna happen, you may as well get fucked up and party it out. And that’s gotta be healthy.

-Deuteronemu 90210 Tha Lonely Donkey Kong-