In an alternate universe we would all worship The Make-Up like Gods. Instead of the Sixties ending with Altamont, that stabbing of an unfortunate by idiot bikers and a truly average performance by the Stones would have signaled a beginning, the beginning of some glorious fucked up distorted beat pop orgy of awesome hair and tight black jeans. Human sacrifices would be made outside of Ian Svenonius' D.C home and other band's maybe even more awesome than The Make-Up would have picked up the baton and run with it in the general direction of a truly better tomorrow.
'I Want Some' is a singles compilation put out by K records while the band was signed to Dischord. 23 songs, each one a clear country mile better than the majority of today's teen guitar bands can muster. Part of the magic of The Make Up is that they are believable. The attitude that comes across in the sound, part Nation of Ulysses, part Cupid Car Club, (both former guises of at least two core members) is totally and utterly believable and much of this is down to the way The Make Up look. It just wouldn't work if they wore the same uniform as many of their D.C counterparts, something would be missing - The call to arms, the reason to worship.
Is it vacuous admitting to being sucked in to something that is almost equal parts music and image? Probably and if they didn't look and sound so fucking good I might give a shit, truth is they legitimize it. Whilst I'm baiting the band, there isn't really anything that original about The Make-Up, but there doesn't really need to be. They got what they did soooo right that any calls of 'derivative' and secondary!' should be punished by death... head based knife death.
They drew a crazy nine pointed star on the floor of the studio, surrounded it with candles and the blood of goats and in it they placed the following:
Love -Love
a copy of '96 Tears' by ? and the Mysterons
Alexander Spence's hair
The Rites of Spring album
After much chanting, self harming, swaying, shaking and very, very little sleep The Make Up is what came out.
Despite the band's truly awesome facade and manifesto the first couple of albums they put out really, really disappointed me. Then eventually came this, I bought it from Selectadisc on Berwick street in 1999 purely because it seemed a very convenient way of getting the two truly great singles I had missed 'Free Arthur Lee' and 'I Was Born on the Floor'. I heard them on the radio (during the brief period that I listened to the radio between 1999 and 1999... I was between houses and without records) and was truly impressed, wondering why it was they couldn't hold it together in a similar fashion for an LP's worth of songs. Anyway, eventually they kind of did, with this...
There should be some kind of test that new bands do. They should be sat down, hooked up to lie-detectors and played this album front to back and then asked 'So do you honestly think you can be even half as good as this?'
If there is even the slightest falter they should be dismissed their guitars confiscated and replaced with Playstations, televisions and copies of Nuts magazine. You see if somebody at Sheffield City Council had thought to put the Arctic Monkey's through these hoops they would have saved a lot of people a lot of pain and anger... Not to mention my teeth, which have due in no small part to that fucking band (who are the exact opposite of Legitimate) been ground down to gums.
Anyway. Brilliant.
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