Virgin
Review by Darren Gawle
Fluffy are preceded in North America by their reputation, and
it's hard to tell if this reputation is well-earned or well-manufactured.
For your consideration, I submit exhibit A: Fluffy (from England,
let the record show) played their very first gig at New York's
legendary CBGB's. Wow! Money just can't buy that kind of
punk credibility...oh wait, maybe it can. Exhibit B, your Honour:
Fluffy are keen to let you know they are hated by Courtney Love.
Let's face facts here: Ms. Love once decked
David Gedge (of the
Wedding Present) merely because he knew Steve Albini, so telling
everyone you've pissed her off is about as impressive as telling
everyone you've figured out the riff to "Smoke on the Water."
Finally, exhibit C: in response to accusations that they were
just a bunch of upper middle-class girls "slumming it"
as Riot Grrls, they fired their original bass player, the unfortunately-monikered
Pandora Ormsby-Gore. Oh, they'll tell you it's because she couldn't
play...
But enough of that. As the well worn adage goes, the proof of
the pudding is in the eating. And what do we get? For all the
packaging, the cover shot of a Siamese cat lunching down on a
white lab rat, the group photos of a band trying to look nasty,
full of "attitude" and yet alluring at the same time,
we get...something quite banal, actually.
It's not that Fluffy don't have the riffs; Black Eye is
chock full of the punk standard riffs that we've come to know
and pogo to courtesy of the
Ramones, the
Sex Pistols,
Nirvana
and (during "I Wanna Be Your Lush") even Superchunk.
That three-chord rock is still a viable commodity is testament,
though, to the ability of bands such as Superchunk or our own
Pluto to reinvent the format. Fluffy just seem
content to bash away, a tactic which would work well enough live,
if carried across with enough energy. On record, however, it bores
the living shit out of you as one track blurs indistinguishably into another.
Lyrically, the album disappoints even further. Admittedly, you'd
be loath to expect poetry the likes of Tennyson or Yeats to pop
up in a genre of music designed as a counterblast to navel-contemplating
dribble such as "Scaramouche! Scaramouche! Can you do
the fandango?", but Johnny Rotten at least had a point.
Most of what singer Amanda Rootes has to say seems to revolve
around vague observations about truisms such as "hangovers
are bad" in "Technicolour Yawn." Sample lyric:
"Woke up in a bed of vomit / I think I hate myself / Woke
up in a bed of vomit / I lost my pink wig and I'm in hell."
Eh? The moral of the story is "The low just isn't worth the
high." Well, that's the record set straight there,
then.
Efforts to deal with more important issues such as rape ("Scream")
and spousal abuse ("Dirty Old Bird") are rendered inconclusive
by Rootes' uncanny ability to write a grade 8-level poem that
simply describes the event without offering any opinion or insight
on the matter. Still, you don't see many bands using words like
"horrid," "effervesce" or "Botticelli"
these days.
Fluffy may inspire teenage girls to go out, learn to play an instrument
and start a band of their own. Fair enough, but one wonders if
this inspiration would be better accompanied by a viewpoint that
isn't as half-baked as Fluffy's. There is nothing shocking about
women singing about their sexuality these days -- in fact, it's
almost de rigeur. The only shocking thing about Black
Eye lies in a band trying to pass themselves off as
Riot Grrls
when in fact they pack as much "Grrr" as a slightly
vexed Yorkshire Terrier.
Fluffy