RECORDS
Deadly Hume Lonely Mr Happy Phantom When Greg Perano left Hunters and Collectors to form Deadly Hume he left behind all the finesse and some of the innovation, but he took with him all the raw rhythmic energy missing from the Hunters’ later material. It was there on the first Deadly Hume album Me, Grandma ... and although it’s waning in places, it's still there on their latest EP. 'Miss Haversham’ and ‘The Girls All Look Like Angels’ possess the kick of a disgruntled mule, and on ‘4B Coffees in 24 Hours’ the band have no trouble embodying Perano’s idea of “100,000 volts twitching through dead meat.”
It's all a long way from perfection, though. ‘Bed, Bread and Humour’ doesn’t approach the musical poignancy required for a lyric so personal, and I have no idea why, years after the death of Queen, Deadly have chosen to revive that crudest of 70s’ excesses, the rock anthem. Like it or not, that’s just what ‘The
Queen and the President’ is and it’s only saved by Perano’s wit. “If the Queen and the President get on so damn well / Why don’t they marry each other and tell their families to go to hell,” he sings, and if it wasn’t for that last line, the song would sound very disposable indeed. One final point: the cover features a full colour photo of one of Auckland’s best known sleaze pits, and although it's probably supposed to highlight the alleged “plight” of the poor souls in grimy overcoats who frequent such places, it means that whenever anyone wants to play the record, they have to look at this eyesore. Matthew Hyland
Martini Ranch (Sire) Two self-style wackos from LA with a mission to extend the idiocy of Devo and the more eccentric funk extremes of Talking Heads into their own tilted view of the world. When they get it right, as in the Morricone send-up ‘Reach,’ the more serious ‘World Without Walls' and the brilliantly titled ‘How Can the Labouring Man Find Time for Self-Culture?’ then they sound as though they might be onto something. But too often they fiddle instead of burning. Probably worth watching. GK
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/RIU19880801.2.51
Bibliographic details
Rip It Up, Issue 133, 1 August 1988, Page 34
Word Count
361RECORDS Rip It Up, Issue 133, 1 August 1988, Page 34
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