Various Acts - 'Guilty Pleasures' (Sony)
3/5
By: Samantha Hall
The most downright, funky celebration of summer lovin', dilating pupils and frisky canoodling this year. Motown soul rhythms and vast, real brass sections ponder to your every Aretha/Ross junkie style addiction. This is how smitten music should be - bright, yellow and beaming. No twinkly, acoustic dribbling overwhelmed with sensitivity and anticipated musings. Pastel bubbles and great rays of sunlight, large oversized dancing bears and huge hair solidified with so much product that it has its own little crater in the ozone layer hovering attentively around it.
The 70's were where it was at. Britain was booming - polyester, cheese and pineapple on sticks and orange sphere wallpaper were in. Yeah man, life was good. So true - maybe a year or so after most of these tracks were in fact released, the harms of Thatcherism invaded our little island and turned us and our country into a state of destitution and despair, but, by God, until then we were feeling those funky beats.
Before 'nasty rough' punk came along and shook things up, these bountiful, upbeat pop numbers made us feel safe. And so, to those that grimace into their trendy, white cosmopolitans how this is no better than a Magic FM compilation, we say, grasping our Horlicks, f**k thee!
There's a time and place and right to pay homage to all things spangly and smiley. We know very clear-headedly which we'd prefer to cosy up to on a chilly Augustan night when faced with either the secure, warm blankets of 'Guilty Pleasures', with its barrage of embarrasso-pop (tracks ranging from 10CC, ELO, Sherbet and David Essex... get the picture?) , or the cluster of stoney 'new' work by Nick Drake.
Artists in this article: Various Acts
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