Mindless Self Indulgence - You'll Rebel To Anything (As Long As It's Not Challenging)

Band Members
Jimmy Urine
Steve Righ?
Lyn-Z
Kitty

MindlessSelfIndulgence.com
Myspace.com/MindlessSelfIndulgence



Tracklisting
1. Shut Me Up
2. Stupid MF
3. Straight To Video
4. What Do They Know
5. 2 Hookers And An Eightball
6. Prom
7. Bullshit
8. Tom Sawyer
9. 1989
10. You'll Rebel To Anything (As Long As It's Not Challenging)
11. Mic Commander [bonus track]
12. La Di Da Di [bonus track]
13. Make Me Cum [demo/previously unreleased/bonus track]
14. Wack [live from Webster Hall, NYC Jul 2005/previously unreleased/bonus track]


Originally released nearly three years ago in America, Mindless Self Indulgence’s ‘You’ll Rebel To Anything (As Long as it’s Not Challenging)’ finally gets a UK release with four bonus tracks. This album, like all of MSI’s releases, is difficult to categorise, sometimes sounding like Outkast (‘What Do They Know’) sometimes like Marilyn Manson (‘Straight To Video’) and sometimes like System of a Down (the vocals of ‘Tom Sawyer’) but mostly sounding like nothing you’ve ever heard before. Album-opener ‘Shut Me Up’ is their most accessible song, a slick mish-mash of distorted guitars, an electro chorus, piercing falsetto vocals and the sound of someone being slapped repeatedly around the face. It all sounds so good that you have to wonder: why has nobody tried this before?

Synth-and-sound-effect-heaped ‘Prom’ uses the sound of a vinyl skipping to provide instant character in much the same way as the slap effects of ‘Shut Me Up.’ Beyond that, ‘Prom’ is all sudden changes of pitch as vocalist Jimmy Urine flips from deep-throated bark to piercing falsetto, finished off with an insanely catchy guitar-line. ‘What Do They Know’ features a looped electronica backbeat which blends in so well that you don’t notice the layers of synths unless you really concentrate. It’s here that you start to realise just how much care MSI put into their music, despite the implied disregard as Urine wildly over-accentuates the rhyme at the end of each line in typical MSI dumb humour. MSI may try and present themselves as not being too hung up about music, but the complexity of songs such as this suggests otherwise. But that’s hardly surprising: no-one makes anything this bizarrely brilliant without putting the effort in.

It’s clear just from these three songs that MSI are mad, but the lyrics of many of their other songs are even more unhinged and crammed with twisted humour. ‘Stupid MF’s lyrics are almost unintelligible but, once you’ve decoded them, you’ll stick this song on repeat just for entertainment value. Extra track ‘Mic Commander’ was originally the bonus track on the American ‘clean’ version of the album and contains strings of backmasked obscenities, which pretty much tells you all you need to know about MSI’s sense of humour.

MSI calm down and put on a straight face for trance-tinged second single ‘Straight to Video’ which is a blend of rock and electronica vaguely reminiscent of Marilyn Manson’s ‘Tainted Love.’ This song is built around an abrasive electronic loop that ensures this song gets stuck in your head to such an extent that listening to it on repeat feels like brainwashing. In contrast, ‘2 Hookers and an Eight Ball’ is MSI’s maddest moment. Crammed with synths and featuring a rap that sounds nothing short of possessed, ’2 Hookers and an Eight Ball’ somehow still manages to sound slick and cool rather than silly.

‘Bullshit’ stands out from the rest of the album in that the music takes a backseat to some seriously satirical lyrics. These take a few listens to fully appreciate, and you have to wonder whether it’s wise to rely on lyrical content when those lyrics are hurtling past the listener at warp speed. However, after the electronic-tinged silliness of much of this album,‘Bullshit’ provides something a little harder to crack, and perhaps this is necessary to keep the listener coming back for more. The ending of ‘Bullshit’ is simply brilliant though, as the stop-start rhythms speed up and Urine’s falsetto provides a counterpoint to the synths, culminating in a storm of skittering guitars, drums, and Atari-esque sound effects that then abruptly cuts off in MSI’s signature kooky style. Another album highlight comes with an unrecognisable cover of Rush’s ‘Tom Sawyer’ which is a slick, Atari-punctuated aural acid trip of a song. The album ends with a live recording of older song ‘Wack’ which seems calculated to pre-empt any claims that MSI are a studio band, incapable of reproducing their sound live. This track proves that not only are MSI capable of producing something mind-boggling, exhilarating and quite unlike anything else out there, but they are capable of producing it live.

Arguably, MSI are not an easy band to get into. Like fellow genre-benders System of a Down and Biffy Clyro, they posses an angular originality that’s a bit of a hurdle for the listener to overcome, but like both of these bands, they pay that initial effort back with ease. ‘You’ll Rebel to Anything….’ is prog-rock, but not as you know it, a mixture of every genre, with lashings of twisted humour and disregard for taste (title-track ‘You’ll Rebel to Anything…’ pokes fun at suicide) and it’s all horribly addictive. Once MSI become your new favourite band, it’s unlikely anyone will replace them, simply because there’s no-one out there who sounds quite like them.


Review by Jessica Thornsby


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