99 Cents is the third album from Kiki Moorse, Melissa Logan and Alex Murray-Leslie, AKA Chicks on Speed. The trouser-suited Berlin trio's delivery remains distantly ironic, detached yet sensuous, inspired equally by punk yelping and electro robotica. Although sounding like a real band in a real room, they frequently subject their voices to digital maltreatment, snipping and repeating, or shunting around. The first three tracks exude such brightly burning brilliance that the remainder has to suffer by comparison, even though we're still talking high-quality conceptual material. "Shooting from the Hip" has firm beats, direct and amusing words, and revolves around a potent guitar pulse, pounding with liberated excess. "We Don't Play Guitars" begins with a stripped mechanoid stomp and some all-consuming bass, before a guest-starring Peaches answers back with a vengeance, shouty and desperate. Then, Tina Weymouth helps out on a bleeping and booting version of her kooky Tom Tom Club classic "Wordy Rappinghood". Even though this holy trinity of tunes is an impossible act to follow, numbers such as "Coventry" and "Culture Vulture" have their own distinct hooks, while "Sell-Out" and the title track go straight for the throat of capitalism. --Martin Longley
Though there was a three-year gap between Chicks On Speed's debut album
Will Save Us All! and its follow-up 99 Cents, the band was busy evolving
via a prolific amount of singles. And, although the two albums roughly
bookended the rise and fall of electroclash, the Chicks' second album
underscores that the band still has more vitality and ideas than most
other artists associated with that trend ever did.
99 Cents reaffirms that the band is more of a smart electronic pop project
than anything else: fashion, consumerism, and conventional notions of
originality and authenticity are all questioned and played with in the
group's intellectually mischievous way. Chicks On Speed do this most
overtly on the album's singles, such as the anti-rock of "We Don't Play
Guitars," which nevertheless features a six-string solo and cameo from
kindred spirit Peaches. The band borrows the Tom Tom Club's highbrow but
inclusive dance-pop of "Wordy Rappinghood" and emphasizes its party vibe
by inviting virtually every likeminded female electronic artist - including
Miss Kittin, Kevin Blechdom, Le Tigre, Adult.'s Nicola Kuperus, and the
Tom Tom Club's own Tina Weymouth - to sing on the track. "Fashion Rules,"
with its vaguely creepy refrain of "fashion is for fashion people," reflects
the band's mingled fascination and repulsion for its targets. The title
track could have been one of their most obvious attacks on consumerism, but
it admits some ambivalence ("I'm not crazy about money, but I like what it
can do"), and the album's liner notes also double as a catalog of Chicks
On Speed merchandise.
However, several of 99 Cents' album tracks make the group's points more
subtly and are some of the most sonically interesting music that they've
made. Where Will Save Us All! was a blast of righteous electro-punk energy,
this album sounds more like fighting the system from within, with a
surprisingly pretty, polished pop side that borrows mainstream dance-pop and
urban production techniques. The choppy, acoustic melancholia of "Coventry"
conveys the isolation of modern life far better than a harangue about it
would; likewise, "Culture Vulture" makes the most of Kiki's Nico-like vocals.
An unusually melancholy undercurrent colors 99 Cents, particularly on the
trophy-girlfriend lament "Love Life" and "Shick Shaving," a pretty, and
pretty disturbing, Miss Kittin-sung track that mixes images of shaving and
cutting. This melancholia seeps into some of the album's louder tracks like
"Sell-Out," which advises "do it to yourself before it's done to you" before
descending into hellish marketing jargon. It's a far cry from the emphatic
style of Will Save Us All! (although this sound pops up, with diminishing
returns, on tracks like "Universal Pussyy"), but it shows how willing
Chicks On Speed are to challenge themselves as well as their listeners.
- Heather Phares, AMG
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