Coco Solid's new album is hot stuff

In a little country over-populated with musical copycats, she's a true original.

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IN THE past, a single disc from Auckland "rap'n'roll" queen Jessica "Coco Solid" Hansell has been enough to make me pass out with joy. Consequently, I put a team of stretcher bearers on stand-by when I heard the fifth album from this self-described "half-caste honey" was to be a double. At the back of my mind, of course, I knew it could all go horribly wrong. After all, double albums are usually, as they say in England, pants.

With a few notable exceptions, such as London's Calling by The Clash, Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation or The Beatles' White Album, the average double album is a flabby, self-indulgent beast that suggests a musician's mushrooming ego has rendered them unable to edit their own work.

That is not the case here. The Radical Bad Attack may be big, but it's also lean. In fact, the thing is all brain and muscle, without an ounce of musical fat. In theory, what we have here is one dance floor-friendly disc ("Sex") and another of more experimental beats ("Science"), but in reality, both discs mash together hip hop, 80s' electro, punk and techno in bold new ways, with the second disc even throwing a twang-happy surf rock instrumental into the mix.

These thrillingly unpredictable rhythm tracks clatter, whirr and bleep in the background as Hansell applies her sharp eye and deliciously deadpan voice to the many irritants and sporadic delights of modern urban life. There are punchlines aplenty directed at false friends, commitment-phobic men, vacuous celebrities and lovers who don't satisfy in the sack, but Hansell's rhymes also brim with sly references to cultural hot topics as diverse as boy racers, the Exclusive Brethren, police rape cases, 2-for-1 pizza deals and Dancing With the Stars.

As always, Hansell has assembled a strong team to help realise her artistic aims, among them long-time partner in rhyme Erik Ultimate, producer ALC5, and a host of new accomplices, including ex-Coolie Melissa West, The Graffiti Girls, Flowsion, Agent Ali and DJ Exile.

But the real star here is Coco. In a little country over-populated with musical copycats, she's a true original, with a style all her own. Her magnificent mongrel beats and eloquent satirising of sex, materialism and pop culture will have you thinking, laughing and dancing, all at the same time, and this album's sonic adventurousness will have you heaving a sigh over how crushingly conservative the rest of our local hip-hop scene is. Enough analysis; just turn it up, and like Coco says, "take your baby to your mother's, let's party tonight". Let's hope her next album's a triple.

You gotta love New Zealand. Where else in the world would a band proudly release a live album in which the breaks between tracks are punctuated by the soul-destroying sound of 18 people clapping? But so it is with Mashed, a splendid new offering from Dunedin band, The Clean, recorded on the latest of their sporadic "reunion" tours last year.

Album opener "Jala" is the kind of instrumental that would have an entire stadium of American rock fans cheering their lungs out, with David Kilgour's wigged-out wah-wah guitar chasing its tail up and down some oddball eastern scales, his brother Hamish battering the skins with his usual mixture of mania and panache, and Robert Scott chugging away righteously on bass. It sounds amazing, unique, brain-fryingly brilliant. But when it ends, you hear the kind of half-arsed cheer that might accompany candles being blown out at a three-year-old's birthday party.

Yes, we New Zealanders are a fairly aloof bunch at rock gigs, even when faced with a band capable of blending surf rock, psychedelia, punk and pop into a homegrown hybrid of great power and grace. Ah, well. The record's great, nonetheless, containing loose-limbed and feisty versions of classic Clean tracks such as "Anything Could Happen", "Fish" and "Point That Thing Somewhere Else" with a scattering of lesser known gems from the trio's illustrious 27-year back catalogue.

There's also a kick-arse cover of the Velvet's peerless "I Can't Stand It", recorded on Hamish's birthday, which will give all those Flying Nun detractors who believe every Nun band is in thrall to the Velvet Underground reason to raise a smug "I told you so" eyebrow. Best of all, Tex Houston's live engineering is such that you feel like you're right there at the gig, your ears ringing, with a wall of stinky bodies pressing you against the lip of the stage.

So by all means whack this on your stereo, turn up the heat, spill warm beer all over your carpet and make up for the lack of crowd noise by cheering your lungs out.

COCO SOLID
The Radical Bad Attack (Graffiti Girl/ Border)
Double the pleasure

THE CLEAN
Mashed (Arch Hill)
Brain-fryingly brilliant

- © Fairfax NZ News