Here we are five years later, ‘So…How’s Your Girl?’ fading like the stain on the proverbial bedsheet and superstar producers Prince Paul (De La Soul) and Dan the Automator (Gorillaz) are still laughing their socks off at the extended ‘so naff, we’re cool’ handsome boy modelling motif. Trouble is, they continue to extend, stretch and draw it out like a last dying breath over the 60 or so minutes the album lasts. And the joke is on them, because it’s just not funny anymore. In fact, I was faintly embarrassed by the resurrection of this inconceivable double-act. The problem lies, not so much in the content, nor the delivery but in the fact that the boys would be better working these observations and commentaries into the tracks and the raps themselves – tracks which for the most part lack any discernable cohesion, or indeed, any point.
Like previous album, ‘So…How’s Your Girl?’ the chaps have enrolled a broad and conflicting range of guest vocalists, and astonishingly, this is one of the only directives the album has. That “Prince“ Paul Huston and Dan “The Automator“ Nakamura both have extensive experience with concept albums (Prince Paul and the horrorcore of Gravediggaz, Nakamura with Deltron 3030 and animated pop band Gorillaz) counts for little on this occasion; the only connection or common thread being the crass and indulgent ‘Handsome Boy’ sketches that glue a half dozen or so of the tracks together. The 25 or so cameos from folks like Del The Funky Homosapien, De La Soul, Limp Bizkit’s Mike Shinoda, Mike Patton, Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, the Mars Volta don’t exactly fail to satisfy – they do in a completely inessential, unspectacular kind of way – but neither do they quite live up to the promise they show on paper. The best moments come from quite unexpected quarters: the slack and slinky beats of ‘Breakdown’ featuring the soulful and the honey-voiced Jack Johnson, Cat Power’s sizzling chill-out number, ‘I’ve Been Thinking’ and the jazzy, swooning croonfest that is Jamie Callum and John Oates’s delightful and staright-faced ‘Greatest Mistake’. Remember Julee Cruise? She of Twin Peaks/Moby ‘Falling Fame’? Well she too turns in a surreal, eerie but memorable performance on ‘Class System’ alongside Pharrell Williams.
For me, Nakamura’s ‘Loveage: Music To Make Love To Your Old Lady By’ explored the overarching ‘product’ motif much more amicably and successfully than either Modelling Boys albums. It was far from subtle, but that was the beauty: it was gorgeously and outrageously over the top. With any luck, the Handsome Boy Modelling School will simply be over.