Albums

The Vichy Government - Whores In Taxis

Bill Cummings 13/06/2005

Rating: 4/5

“Whores in Taxis” is the Vichy's second album. If you haven't heard of them by now then Filthy Little Angels signings The Vichy Government are the dabbing DIY retro keyboard noise of Andrew Chilton topped by the poetic bile filled missives of Ulster Born and Cambridge Educated blond bombshell Jamie Manners. He's less a singer more a creator of rant filled, post-modern vignettes full of disdain for the state of popular culture and current society. Intelligent as it is biting this is an album of Twisted love songs “Serbian Warlord” and the myth making verbal atom bombs of “How to become a cult figure” or the destruction of the American Dream on “Mickey Mouse” sample lyrics: “Chandler and Phoebe are waiting for you in a land where the Sun never sets/ Boredom and pain will both become strangers you will forget all your regrets.” Elsewhere “Life should mean life” is a bitter attack on the Daily Mail's obsession with scapegoats: “All's well in the world if the old bill get their man/Then each of us is safe in our Semi Detached council flats/Compressed into little square shaped earns long before we feed the worms/When we lose our menial dead end jobs/Market forces don't sell papers or bring anybody fame.” Whores in Taxi's is the sound of a low rent synth OMD augmented by A northern Irish Bill Hicks, these words contain bitter, sarcastic and alienated anger at everything. I recommend it highly.

(originally part of the This Month We Have Mostly Been Listening To... feature)