"Fuck the Pain Away"

Peaches - Fuck the Pain Away (2000)

Our third song in the Electroclash genre. I'd never heard of it before this book.



Yeah, this isn't my thing. It's not bad, just repetitive and doesn't really have a melody in the music. Lots of cymbals, bass drum, and synth bass. Lyrically Peaches does some fun things, referencing stay in school (she was a teacher before becoming a performer) in the same line as birth control, and dropping references to Blondie and Chrissie Hynde. Musically it is early Electroclash, and I find that I like the other two examples better. This is just too striped down for me. Reminds me of early Hip-Hop with the simple beats and clever rhymes but this came out in 2000 not 1980. Once again we find that a dance song and I don't really mesh, but at least I can say I get this one, it's just not my favorite.

"Let's Make Love and Listen to Death from Above"

CSS - Let's Make Love and Listen to Death from Above (2003)

"Electroclash is a style of music that fuses New Wave and electronic dance music."

That's as good a definition as possible for this 6 piece band out of São Paulo Brazil. Funky bass lines, spacey keyboard sounds and a never-ending high hat dance beat make this song go. Lyrically it sounds like a teenager's poems written on Myspace in sparkly glitter font. They are actually name checking Canadian Dance-Punk band Death from Above 1979 in the title. At 2:30 we get two lines sung in a weird 'robot cat' voice. It's an odd song to say the very least.

According to the Internet, founder, primary songwriter, drummer, bassist, producer, and only male member Adriano Cintra left the band just a short while ago (November 11th 2011) saying that the rest of the band had let fame go to their head, and they weren't very good musicians anyway. He said they could not used any songs he wrote for the new album, and basically gave them a huge brush off in the Brazilian press.

"Strict Machine"

Goldfrapp - Strict Machine (2003)

Distopian future dance hit.

A British electronic dance track about being trained to accept and in fact take pleasure in complying with orders given. It's synthesizer heavy and even the drum part sounds like it was played on a machine. The lower bass synth sounds and the highest synth sounds both really make me think of New Wave. The artists have said they were drawing from late 70s disco and glam, but all I'm catching is pure 80s. It even has backmasking, with backward recorded vocals inserted near the end. This song would not be out of place in a Tron style movie. Except in this version, the MCP wins. In fact, primary color and kaleidoscope inspired video not withstanding, this song really makes me think 1984 in more ways than one.