Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 14/04/08
Label: EMI

Listen to the B-52s first studio album in 16 years and within ten seconds it's like the 21st century never happened. They sound just the same. "Rock Lobster" could sit on here swinging its feet and not draw any funny glances at all. And it's a delight. As easy as dropping ice cream into a coke float, producer Steve Osborne (who also donates a bit of bass) mixes up retro sounds like surf guitar, vocoder and lounge music with modern touches such as shiny electro-pop, avant-garde swooshes and dirty squelches.

Fred Schneider's ironic drawl is as camply outrageous as ever. He declaims lines like "Take this party to the White House lawn / Things are down and dirty in Washington", in the manner of a sarcastic school teacher reading a pupil's secret note aloud. Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson's distinctively gutsy harmonies swerve girlish tweeness in favour of a full-blooded femininity that's got more in common with Boudicca and Barbarella than the Sugababes. Keith Strickland's riffs support the whole jolly shebang like well-bounced bed springs. Plus ça change.

No loitering in the lobby for "Funplex" - it's straight into the party with "Pump", a five minute-long exploding piñata of smoking beats, jungle drums, handclaps, a looping garage rock guitar riff that'll be nicked by Girls Aloud six months from now and droolingly lascivious vocal imperatives from all concerned. There's even talk of "runaway trains" and "jelly bones" which will help no end on the dancefloor. The girls-only "Juliet Of The Spirits" is played pretty straight - ethereal '80s disco-pop that could be Altered Images or possibly Ladytron.

Against fierce competition - they tackle lyrics like a small child attacks paint pots - it's the title track (the closest here to a "Love Shack" moment) that has the best lines, the classic B-52s 'dialogue': "Hey lady / What? / What lady? / That lady? / No!" and then "I'm your daytime waitress / At the Taco Tiki Hut / I'm your daytime waitress / Here's your stupid 7-Up". Best of all, though, is: "The world is goin' to hell / And what is that horrible smell?" Other highlights include funk pop-meets-old-school hip hop number "Eyes Wide Open" and retro-futurist, sci-fi sex-with-robots romp "Love In The Year 3000", which is so familiar it could have been made 40 years ago.

Meanwhile, the trippy "Deviant Ingredient" might be read as a celebration of the band's unique erotic chemistry: "Crew cuts and bouffants / It's the yin and yang Shang-a-Lang", which rather confirms our suspicion that the party always went on long after the curtain came down. They're none of them far off their bus passes now, but if you don't still smile at the sound of Kate and Cindy singing "Shimmy shimmy - hot shimmy shimmy" ("Hot Corner") like hungry cavewomen, you've simply no heart.

    by Anna Britten