It has taken five years for Justine Frischmann and her band to cobble together the follow-up to their self-titled debut, and guess what? It's just like she never went away! The Menace is exactly what we once learned to expect from Elastica: sharp, jerky, post-punk tunes, scratchy feline cool and sexy, straight-from-the-hipster lyrics. The reference points haven't moved an inch - Wire-y rhythms, Strangler-ated bass-lines and Fallesque obliqueness. Human even gives a co-writing credit to Wire, while How He Wrote Elastica Man features Mark E. Smith on guest vocals-ah. Songs like Mad Dog God Dam, Love Like Ours and Your Arse My Place are snappy slices of vintage Elastica; even their cover of Trio's 1982 hit, Da Da Da, has a topsy-turvy logic to it.
Various Artists: Southern Fried (Tuna/Prime Time)
By Kevin Courtney
This CD was handed to me in a Barcelona night-club, and it features a bunch of bedroom beat merchants from Cork, with such obscure names as Resonance, Citizen AKA, The Mighty Quark, Connection 924 and Fishgodeep. Cork has long been a hotbed of hip-hop, funk, drum'n'bass and techno, and this collection showcases some of the talent which lurks along the Lee. Judging from the loose, laid-back beats and breaks which ooze out of these 14 tracks, young clubbers in Cork are enjoying a nice, sunny siesta, and Southern Fried could be the perfect soundtrack for a stoned soul picnic in Clonakilty. Dance compilations can be erratic affairs, fusing incompatible styles and focusing on self-indulgent noodling, but the people at Prime Time and Tuna have kept everything at a nice, consistent clip.
