If, like the rest of us, Christmas and New Year has made a drunken, fear-ridden, post-abortive mess of your little brain, then the Gay For Johnny Depp retropsective Manthology comes highly recommended for some brain-bashing, cathartic power fisting fixer uppers.
Forming in New York in 2004, Gay For Johnny Depp have been a band worth following for the ever-delightful band name in itself as well as for their reliably snigger-trigger song titles. A selection of which include Sex In Your Mouth, Fucking Isn’t Cheating, Hey Fucked Up! (Punk Rock Can’t Exist In Countries With Good Social Services) and the beautiful To The Alcoholics: Life IS Depressing. We do love a band who realise the importance of word-play as a foreplay to the music.
But anyway, the album is a real fucking treat. A biting, jagged, sneering and jaunty little collection of post-hardcore ear busters. There’s enough variety here to keep the 31 songs from getting monotonous, including the pseudo-teen-metal-esque Delirium Approaches (Slut Dust), as well as Hey Sailor! A lo-fi, Daniel Johnston style ditty aggressively caterwauling for info on who a sailor is blowing. There’s also the tongue-in-cheek Mogwai-esque Godspeed You Black Mogwai which is a fittingly dreamy tribute to the beautiful but miserable Scottish five piece.
Gorgeous.
There’s also the standard love pantheons to Johnny Depp – No Teeth Thumbs Up is an extra-special fanny-rouser of a song featuring the divine lyricisms of ‘I want to fuck you/ I want to fuck you/ I want to fuck you/ Johnny’, that I think we can all get on board with.
The manthology is packed with chooooons a plenty, basically. Lyrical, filthy growlers of unfettered passive aggressive dreaminess. Storming guitars that drill dutifully and brashly into occasionally darling little riffs of Hell. Fucking. Yes. Please. The vocals too are consistently charming, character driven, brazen little furies.
If you appreciate music that is consistently determined to berate and destroy our generation’s ‘culture’ as well as telling everyone to fuck off in every song, then this comes highly recommended. It’s a goldmine of misanthropic witticisms and furious anti-culture, politicised apathy.
I can feel my hangover improving already. Recommended. Big time.
Official website: http://gayforjohnnydepp.com/
Download the awesomeness from here: http://tiny.cc/FQaFh