Sometimes you're trawling through the music blogs, and you listen to a single from a band with a funny name and it's kind of great; weird, but you like that. So you pick up the album and 47 minutes later, mind thoroughly blown, you're having a strong cup of tea and a cigarette, trying to work out what exactly happened in your life to lead you to this point. This is the experience of listening to the often frighteningly unsexy Sexyparty.
The album is mostly improvised, so there's plenty of long jams where ideas are fleshed out and thrown away and winding side-tracks cut through any central themes. Vocalist Chris Patterson seems to be torn on whether he wants to fuck or fight, working through the pros and cons of each. There's the violent and bombastic High School Massacre, where Patterson embodies the twisted defiance of youth “I didn't want to have to explain it all, I didn't wanna draw the fucking picture for you/I didn't wanna have to point out the flowers and the hearts”, then the equally twisted Just Don't Say That You Love Me, possibly the creepiest seduction song in recent history (“I'll slap those thighs!/I just wanna give it to ya when you look at me with those eyes”).
The romantically unromantic and wistful closer Sincerely, C. Patterson seems like a perfect, put-a-bow-on-it resolution, with lyrics about letting go and gentle country-tinged backing. But that's a little too neat, so after four minutes of silence the track returns as a distorted, unhinged freak-out that makes sure you never really get comfortable with this record, and have to come back to it again and again.
