The Cinematics: "Love and Terror"
TobiasWell hell, Generation Xers, look at you, getting old, so old that the kids look back on your 80s as though you were all Molly Ringwalds and Duckies and people rode triceratopses to work – so cute! Cinematics are totally “digging that hepcat scene,” like you used to say when Grover Cleveland was president, and so the Scottish foursome intro their newest (and first for Orchard, which assimilated the recently bankrupted TVT Records, the band’s last label) with two interchangeable but quite danceable tunes that fuse Franz Ferdinand to XTC, which isn’t the craziest stretch, come to think about it.
New Order worship comes next, with “New Mexico,” authenticity dripping off Scott Rinning’s Vicks Vapo-Rubbed baritone, and then bang on cue, it’s a Depeche Mode/Wire/INXS crockpot repping the title track. More INXS, this time inflected with Kings of Leon, at the INXS-ishly titled “Lips Taste Like Tears,” followed later by the Simple Minds-inspired “Hospital Bills.” As you can see, this reads less like an album from the heart than a term paper for Rock History 101, but it does dare all the Mollys and Duckies to say for sure it didn’t come out in ’84.
By Eric Saeger
Homepage: The Cinematics
Homepage: Orchard Records
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