Published on Nov 26, 2004
If the question, “what is hip in contemporary music?” were to be
asked, the answer would lie in going back to the past – retro.
Retro has become the new fashion-statement in music-styles these
days, with bands taking their sounds to as early a time as the
sixties. So, to the list of new bands that feel “old is the way to
go,” here is another addition — introducing This Years Blonde.
This Years Blonde is all ’80s glam, complete with the audacity,
et al. It is a one-man army of an American-European Kiki Du Parre.
Though the new generation retro acts have got the music right, they
have got the sartorial details all messed up – all of them look so
good! Wasn’t music till the ’90s all about bad hairdos and silly
costumes?
Kiki has got all the wrong ‘glam’ styles right: his hair makes
him look like a llama on a bad hair day. He is seen wearing scary
trinkets on his body, which is generously adorned with scarier
tattoos, and his album-cover, with the terrible lip-image and the
warning saying “Rock Erotic Inside,” makes him look as stupid as
the stupidest ’80s glam hair-band. The album-cover does not look as
sleazy as it looks silly, and the music isn’t too erotically
stimulating either. So, the whole concept of being shoddy is simply
the ‘glam’ way of being cool.
Like every ’80s rock act with bad dressing sense and excellent
music sense, This Years Blonde’s music is all about catchy guitar
hooks, appealing chorus, and great sense of melody. It sings what
hair-bands used to sing about in the eighties — love, sex and
darkness — with words that are as good as their hair.
Kiki, with his baritone voice, sounds like David Bowie in a
five-piece glam-band, and the music, if not too flashy as
glam-rock, is gothic — it is eighties goth, in the year 2004.
Unlike the ‘Marilyn Manson’ goth of today, which is more of
plentiful noise and ruckus than actual music, This Years Blonde’s
music is well embellished with moody guitars — and vocals to the
effect that it doesn’t have to scream its gut out to sound spooky.
Kiki has a back-up female singer on most of the songs, giving an
interesting blend to the texture of his eerily calm and composed
vocals.
The ’80s glam-scene was big on solos, and though not as shabby
and haughty, This Years Blonde’s solos are refined and less
chaotic. “To The Night,” a song bolstered with long and laid-back
theatrical solos, has the guitars sounding all swirly and
atmospheric. The same is with “Big Star,” this time, with the
guitar-hook that is redolent of the early Cure. However, “Turning
Of The Page” is typically glam, with a quick riff and an energizing
solo.
Though musically retro, the album too sounds like the early
eighties, meaning even the ‘sound’ of the album, sounds from the
age when U2 had still not become a household name. This however
goes well with the music of the band, unless it tries to go too
‘techno’ as it does on “Violated,” in which case, it starts
sounding like a low-budget horror movie, where the ghosts look more
funny than horrifying. Also, Kiki’s attempts to mix his baritone
vocals with his higher-pitched singing on songs like “I’m Doing
Well” and “Love Screams” suffers due to overly-done ambiguity in
vocals v/s poor sound-mixing. But the rest of the record is
haunting and catchy, so all is forgiven.
Though unknown, This Years Blonde is a necessary addition to
today’s bands that are becoming intelligent by going stupid. This
Years Blonde’s melody-driven goth-rock proves that bands like
Sisters Of Mercy and artists like Billy Idol made as much useful
contribution to the eighties sound, as Culture Club or Duran Duran
have, by being big influences on the talented young bands of today
that are reliving the wonderful 80s where music was all music, and
looks didn’t matter.
[For more information on This Years Blonde, visit
www.thisyearsblonde.com]