Filthy, filthy, filthy. But beautiful, in its own way…
by Kate CopstickI have an overwhelming desire, since listening to this strange little album, to give a dinner party, have it playing quietly in the background and see how long it would take to stop the conversation. Because stop the conversation it most certainly would.
Beautiful Filth is a collection of one dozen dedicatedly dirty songs and one can see how the oxymoronic nature of the title is supposed to be mirrored in the recordings themselves. The songs combine ridiculously rude lyrics with catchy singalong tunes and clubby, dancey production. All sung in a tiny girl-voice. Sort of Eurotrash meets Eurovision. Some of the lyrics are just irresistibly silly: ‘Put it in, put it in, put it all the way in’ bounces one chorus, ‘don’t think it’s too big, don’t think it’s a sin’ (by this time your toes will be tapping) ‘whether Cumberland fat or Frankfurter thin’ (join in if you want) ‘put it in put it in, put it all the way in’.
Song titles go from the innocuous Hair through the romantic Would You Still Love Me? to the grateful Thank You For Not Smelling Of Fish the bestial Don’t Have Sex With A Goat and the downright tragic I Think His Penis Died. The lyrics run the gamut from the puerile and reductionist to the quite brilliant. Hitler Moustache bewails an intimate waxing experience gone horribly wrong. While the song develops into a helter-skelter ride through the front-bottom section of the thesaurus, it does contain the glorious couplet ‘I don’t know if it was accident or design, but inside my pants it’s 1939’, which is funny in anyone’s book.
My favourite has to be I Think His Penis Died. It has giggle-worthy lyrics, some sweetly clever rhymes carried by a hummable melody. My only real problem with this collection of rudery is that I think the wrong person has recorded it. I understand the sweet/sour idea of having something appalling delivered sweetly, but it does not work here. I can hear these songs being sold to raucous reaction, but not by this voice. And not really with this synthesised over-production. Most of the songs are quite long and do, to be honest, outstay their welcome and this is exacerbated by the aforementioned delivery.
Having said which, I have every intention of keeping my review copy and playing it whenever I have friends around.
And I would love to see someone give the performance the jizz injection it sounds like it needs and get it on stage.
One thing is for sure. It is a unique stocking filler. As it were.
To buy Beautiful Filth, visit www.thelovelyelectric.com
