Fuzzbox - 'Look At The Hits On That' (Warner)
3/5
By: Thomas Hannan
The thought of indie kids looking upon this as some kind of guilty pleasure will not be one new to the girls of Fuzzbox (or, to give them their proper name, We've Got A Fuzzbox & We're Gonna Use It!! - complete with over-enthusiastic punctuation and all). Ever since a now-legendary free 'NME' cassette many years back threw them into the bedrooms of a number of impressionable teenage boys, Fuzzbox have maintained some kind of credibility that belies their unashamedly cheesy pop sound. But guilty pleasures are - after all - still pleasures, so the only thing to do is to wholeheartedly binge.
For a 'Best Of' (you couldn't guess from the title?), it's a bemusing mix of inanely pleasing, vital pop and some ridiculous, hideously cute in-jokes that you'll be quite happy to not be let in on. It certainly keeps you on your toes, be it by moving from such timelessly frivolous catchy pop such as 'Pink Sunshine' (even at their peaks, Kylie Minogue and Madonna would still have killed to sing that one) to the gutsy but chirpy punk of 'Rules & Regulations' without batting an eyelid, or by including such throwaway nonsense as 'Rocking With Rita (Head To Toe)' on a compilation that's meant to showcase nothing but their finest moments. There's wonderfully considered, if dated, melody on 'Taking The Easy Way Out' (imagine The Waitresses with more keyboards and singing about processed peas instead of why Christmas is lame), and then bemusing takes on 'Spirit In The Sky' and songs inspired by the admittedly fantastic 'Thunderbirds' ('International Rescue)'. It's as if a gauntlet is being thrown down, the girls reiterating that this was what they did, and challenging us to try and make some kind of sense of it.
Well, to be honest, we'd rather not. It's not entirely clear, after a while living with this record, that there's any sense to be found in this mess, after all. Just look at the band's name and the enormous pair of breasts on the cover; never mind the sheer confusion brought on by actually taking the record out of its case and playing it. Coherence is nowhere, but quirky little tunes and lashings of fun are in plentiful supply, so we'll stop reading so deeply into things, even if the odd instance of proper songwriting raising its head throws spanners into the works of a theory even this flexible ('So Long', for example, is properly lovely). This lot are clever - don't forget that - just leave it to one side.
Rose-tinted spectacles resting atop our noses, Fuzzbox look to be proof of the higher status of the bygone age - a time when pop music had the capacity to be incredibly, inanely stupid, but impossible to figure out, and properly sanctioned listening material for those more usually found indulging in the whines of boys with guitars. It's far from faultless (it's a good few tracks too long, for starters), but at its best, this is hairbrush microphones in front of the mirror stuff - and don't let anyone tell you to act otherwise.
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