Radio 4

Gotham! (Gern Blandsten)
by Lex Marburger

First thing: They’re named after a PiL tune. Second: They sound like a sodomized Wire/Gang of Four hybrid. Wait! Don’t leave. I didn’t mean for that to be an insult. I mean, you’ve got some pissed singers, but you’re not sure why they’re mad. I mean, there’s some really angular white boy intellectual funk going on here. And there’s enough crackling non-music stuff going on. I mean non-music, like non-expected.

The guitar is spinning around like a Sufi with a broken-glass suit. The vocals aren’t just mad like you hear on the radio, they’re harsher than you’d expect. Audibly, I mean. Not some rage-filled angst machine, or empty fury. Like they have something to say, and it doesn’t matter what the words are, cuz the snotty’n’pissed inflection tells ya all you need to know. Yes, if you miss the stuff on college radio in 1985. No, if you think Nu Shooz or Stacy Q were cutting edge.
(PO Box 356 River Edge, NJ, 07661)