Archie Bronson Outfit
Derdang Derdang

THE REVIEW

To describe them, these Archie Bronson Outfit, doesn't really make one eager to listen to them, at least for me. Shrill voice like David Byrne (now a must if you want to make it to the charts), at times wave/post-punk drumming, simple songs whose appeal lies precisely in their repetitiveness.

Yet for some inexplicable reason, I haven’t been able to take them out of the player for a couple of weeks. The more I tell myself that they are nothing new, that the musical references are all too obvious and that in two months they’ll be gathering dust on the shelf, the more I can't wait to finish the review to rush out and buy them.
Call it compulsive consumerism, musical blindness, frustrated wannabe musician, or simply idiocy, but I know that, even if just for a little while, I’ll be happy to own this record. And isn’t taste perhaps a matter of habit? The first time I heard the Stooges they seemed like a bunch of idiots with terrible sounds; after repeated listens they became one of my favorite bands.

A vague nod to the deviant Stooges of "Funhouse" triggered my musical "spider sense" while listening to "Derdang Derdang". The opener "Cherry Lips" emblemizes this feeling, thanks to a sensational free jazz sax finale (borrowed directly from "1970" of the aforementioned Stooges), preceded by a hypnotic progression à la Modern Lovers and decidedly groovy. And the shrill, derivative voice sticks to the piece perfectly.
The same Detroit sound direction is taken in the blazing voodoo-billy "Rituals" and the schizophrenic "Got To Get". Impeccable also are "Dart For My Sweetheart", with its wavering pace and female choirs, or "Dead Funny", cold, twilight post blues that grows until it engulfs a spacey Hammond in the background.

What surprises is the number of good tracks within the album, a rare thing these days. Probably history will not prove me or them right, but in times of space-time compression like in today's industrialized society, the famous fifteen minutes of fame isn't far from formally becoming "History".