Art Brut: "Slap Dash For No Cash"

Oh, Art Brut, you cheeky lads! Most indie rock bands are desperate to craft a unique sound, but you guys are perfectly content in Wire and Parklife (1994)-era Blur territory, choosing instead to cement a distinctive…what, lyrical style? Comedy routine? Schtick? It means that when you read this…

“They call it Lo-Fi…if you say so! / Cool your warm jets, Brian Eno! / Slap-dash for no cash / Those are the records I like! / Slap-dash for no cash / When something doesn’t sound quite right”

...that you just know it’s an Art Brut song. And so even if you’ve not yet heard the Art Brut Vs. Satan leak that’s floating around, you are now fully capable of imagining it: Eddie Argos talk-sings those lines, some dudes shout stuff in the background, and the rest is just slightly beefier Pink Flag (1977) post-punk.

When Art Brut first came onto the scene with still-awesome Bang Bang Rock & Roll (2006), what made them stand out was their proclivity for (and proficiency with) amusing and memorable one-liners, charmingly delivered by Eddie Argos’ obnoxious voice with a refreshing sense of self-reflexivity and -parody. Which is another way of saying that the actual music was secondary to whatever Argos had to say about NME or Top Of The Pops. So while Bang Bang‘s humor amused and delighted—I still giggle to myself when I see a girl naked for the second time, thinking back to “Good Weekend”‘s best bit—Art Brut were faced with the inevitable dilemma of whether to follow it up with more of the same and face pigeonholing or else tone down the gags and play the next LP slightly straight. They went with the latter. It’s A Bit Complicated (2007) signaled a shift away from the gimmickry of their debut, dropping the one-liners in favor a more traditional approach. The result was a less polarizing but also less exciting record; it smartly avoided Bang Bang‘s major missteps but failed to retain its charm and charisma. I doubt many kids are buying “It’s A Direct Hit!” t-shirts but I’ll happily have “Popular Culture No Longer Applies To Me” or “Modern Art Makes Me Want To Rock Out” adorning my chest. One-trick, maybe, but it’s a good trick.

Which leads us to the forthcoming Art Brut Vs. Satan and its best track, “Slap Dash For No Cash,” a playful ditty about the merits of lo-fi recording:

“I love the sound of background noise / Hear the crack of the singer’s voice / I hear his friends hanging around / I hear him play an instrument he just found / I hear his parents hanging around / I hear his parents saying ‘turn it down!’”

Tough to tell if they’re seriously taking the piss or if it’s just a bit of a laugh. There’s no profound criticism or revelatory indictment to be found here, to be sure, but this song maybe does have something interesting to say about the sudden influx of “shitgaze” records like Wavvves and Rip It Off. The production here, as you might expect, apes the lo-fi aesthetic without veering too far into shit-sound territory. The impression I get is that Art Brut still want to sound good when sounding bad, and Argos needs to come in loud and clear if these jokes are going to get a laugh. This is not a gripe: everything on Art Brut Vs. Satan sounds impeccable, thanks in no small part to Frank Black, whose presence here as the requisite “we’re-popular-so-let’s-hire-an-indie-celebrity” producer is so prominent and talked-about that frankly I’m a little surprised there’s not a song on the album about it. But the real focus here is the return of the Bang Bang‘s charming sense of humor: “Slap Dash For No Cash,” like much of Vs. Satan, is very clever and very funny. This is the Art Brut I missed.