Funplex - The B52s Album Review
The B52s : link
Album Review
Great return from the shiny happy bunch!
It is their 8th studio album and 32 years on, they still deliver the goods after a long but productive break of 18 years.
Their comeback was worth the wait and ‘Funplex’ is more hedonistic than ever, inviting its listeners to a global orgy on the closing track ‘Keep This Party Going’. As its title suggest, it’s all about having fun with no complex.
The B52s do brand themselves as a party band so nothing too surprising here.
Lyrically, the album flows with incitation to debauchery and open-mindedness.
Musically, the cool elderlies show how it’s done to many of their impertinent and irrelevant younger peers:
Surely Tahita Bulmer of NYPC must have listened to many of their records and modelled her delivery on Kate Pierson’s vocals, and the drums and guitars on “Ultraviolet” and the eponymous ‘Funplex’ are exactly the sound that the Dandy Warhols have been failing to achieve album after album….
Throughout, Freddy (Schneider) parades his trademark Sprechgesang, the verve of which Johnny Rotten must be cringing not to have retained, but hey it’s long been established that Punk is Dead, hasn’t it?
Strong of this knowledge, the B52s make masterclass exploitation of electro (‘Eyes Wide Open’ and ‘Love in the Year 3000’) and garage rock (‘Too Much To Think About’, ‘Hot Corner’) But don’t be mistaken: this is a highly atmospheric record we’ve got here- particularly enjoyable on ‘Juliet of the Spirits’ and ‘Dancing Now’, both enhanced by Kate Pierson’s vocal excellence.
So why change a winning formula, and not “Keep doin’ what you’re doin’/ ‘cause you’re doing’ it right” [and] it’s what we like…” like Fred and Kate proudly chant on ‘Ultraviolet’?
The B52s cleverly work with what they’ve got, that is the fun, the voice(s) and the flair, making them possibly the only band on earth to escape grief and mockery for still wanting to be rocking in a free world at 60.
