Pigface

Easy Listening… (Invisible)
by Lex Marburger

There was a point in time when I used to frequent a Goth/industrial/fetish club in town. I would go, have some drinks, dance, and watch pale girls in tight leather. After a while, I stopped going, not because the girls got any less attractive. Rather, I began to realize I really didn’t like the music being touted as “industrial.” I mean, I like unpleasant music, but what I was hearing was more like dance floor disco with a distortion pedal. Wax Trax is one thing, sure, but this stuff was just uninspiring garbage. It seems the only band that keeps looking in new directions is Pigface, and their new album only further proves the point. For starters, Easy Listening rolls through more styles of music than collaborators (as always, the revolving door of Pigface is spinning like a speed freak drunk off too much gin: En Esch, Groovie Mann, Chris Connelly, Chris Vrenna, Keith Levine, Penn Jillette, Geordie, etc., etc., ad infinitum), flipping from the proto-funk of “Mind Your Own Business” (an old Delta 5 track) to the old-school Ministry-tinged “Bitch” (hey, if Ministry can’t do it anymore, it’s not really a rip-off, right?), to the tongue-in-cheek, almost pretty “Sweetmeat” to the sitar-driven “Closer to Heaven.”

A good deal of Easy Listening reaches back to the guitar-laden aggression of late ’80s industrial music, with the additions of current sampling technology, jumping from loop to loop, the ever-shifting textures never numbing, always jerking your ears back, front, and center. You even get Chris Connelly doing his best Outside-era Bowie impersonation on “Miss Sway Action.” I tell you what, if people started spinning this stuff on the dance floor, I may just be tempted to put on the PVC pants once more for old times’ sake.
(www.undergroundinc.com)