Ever since Denim ground to an unceremonious halt in that Paris underpass, whenever that was, I've been waiting for Go-Kart Mozart to deliver on the promise of Back in Denim. I know Go-Kart Mozart were a different group - sort of - and one for which disappointment might even be considered a central theme, but then I'm nothing if not an optimist*. Anyway, I've been listening to Mozart Estate for about a month now, and I think he's nailed it this time.
Surprisingly, and despite the glaring similarities, the Estate does indeed seem to be a slightly different animal to its pram-wheeled forerunner, occupying a reasonably comfortable midway between the airbrushed studio stomp of Denim and the bargain bucket novelty of the intermediary incarnation. I'm fairly certain the drums, for example, are programmed, but you have to listen closely to tell and the Bontempi organ has seemingly been relegated to the cupboard under the stairs. It's mostly business as usual, I suppose - songs which sound like seventies television commercials, chirpy sub-Beatles jingles, the potential influence of Mike Batt, and everything with a synthetic fibre sheen of the artificial so squeaky clean that it's initially quite hard to listen to; but the themes are even darker than usual, with the grinding squalor and despair thrown into contrast as sharp as a Stanley knife at the cup final by unrelenting jollity, and yet with nothing I can identify as either cynicism or irony. There's the typically unsavoury view of the homeless alongside a cheery homage to Poundland, Vanilla Gorilla which seems to stand in praise of white van man, the thoroughly unsettling I Wanna Murder You, and pretty much every track delivers a distinct whiff of the unsavoury with its broad showbiz grin.
I'm about to do something crazy.
You'd better give the cops a call.
The things I need to express,
Are all against the law.
Nothing specifically invokes Savile but this record nevertheless feels somehow like Consumer Electronics with tunes, and not just tunes but a full stage show with glittery dancers filling the slot between Doctor Who and Brucie's Generation Game. Pop-Up! Ker-Ching! and the Possibilities of Modern Shopping is potentially the most horrible record you've ever heard and probably qualifies Lawrence as an actual genius.
*: This is patently untrue.
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