So finally, out rolls this season’s ultimate must-have fashion thing. And if you were even thinking about pressing play whilst wearing those comfy slacks, that nondescript baggy t-shirt and those Star Wars socks you got for Christmas, just take a moment would you! If you were a religious vegan would you stand proud in the house of God wearing a Cradle of Filth long-sleeve tee and real-leather posing pouch? Absurd comparison maybe, this is not a religious experience by any stretch, there’s no devotion or Church of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but you get the point. No, this is about The Moment. The Now. This Instant and every grain of dirt and betrayal and cheap love, sex, sweat, social severance and personal excess that can be heaped in. And the experience would be all the better if you were looking a little more fucking sharp, dontcha think?
The fact is, this is cheap music, shallow music, pretty unchallenging in its ingredients. But it makes you feel fucking fabulous. It’s throttled so damn hard with on-the-boil sass you’ll be convinced it’s the most exhilarating thing you’ve wrapped your ears around since, I dunno, Sleater Kinney’s ‘All Hands On the Bad One’ maybe. That’s a trick of the light by the way, the way the stiching lies, but it’s also completely true. There’s so much front here it’s hard to work out what lies behind, y’know that you’ll still be able to clutch feverishly to in 12 month’s time and beyond. But there’s lust and there’s spunk in spades, and that stuff can last forever given the right conditions.
Obviously the machismo that beset JSBX’s repetitive charismatic grind (with whom worthy contrasts exist) is absent, Karen O’s cross-eyed shrieks raising Nick Zinner’s angular trudge up to a place it can be rightfully gawped at. It’s only a shame they hit their peak back on that debut EP, but that doesn’t mean there ain’t plenty more where ‘Bang’ and ‘Our Time’ came from. More slutty lyrics (“boy you’re just a stupid bitch / girl you’re just a no good dick”), more fizzy vocal fits (‘Tick’), more Banshee-pop (‘Pin’), more grubby riffery (‘Man’). And nothing as indistinct as practically forgotten second single ‘Machine’. She even sings, really sings, like an ambivalent Debbie Harry on the beautifully scarce ‘Maps’. It may be balanced perilously on a thin artistic premise, but where’s the fun without the omnipresent danger. We’re going to attach a pin now and wear our ‘Fever…’ with pride.