Christeene
Midnite Fukk Train
(Spaceflight Records)
Backstage, Christeene has been talking, shouting, laughing, screaming for three hours now. That’s the voice. That’s the difference between then, the old New York of speed and brazen bravery, and now, the demand to be seen, accepted, probably teetotal and militant. The voice, still hoarse but no longer hesitant, no longer draped in irony and running in and out of the shadows. It’s just there, coming out of Christeene’s mouth.
That’s what I hear as they wonder out loud how many people are needed to fix their dick on Fix My Dick, even if the huge dick-sized nod to Azealia Banks’s 212 could be interpreted as ironic, to my ears it reads tribute. No need to qualify. Damn it, even the horns on this album sound confident, slurred and sleazy but accepted, as if James White didn’t need his mom to love him after all.
I can even hear sophisticated scenesters Was Not Was on Beacoup Morocco, such is the Mudd Club effect mainlining throughout. I hope Christeene has some proper charisma beneath the Halloween drag because, if so, this stuff live would be immense. (Right just youtubechecked and, yep, Christeene fronting this set with a full band would be worth checking.)
There’s something endearingly old fashioned about the arrangements. It’s (probably) accidentally Stiff Records in places. Lena Lovich after an acid gargle, Reckless Eric in his fantasies, stepping through suburbia in heels, Ian Dury’s cross-Atlantic alter ego. Really.
Such a glorious, fucked up multi-fruited jam, stuffed in a pizza pie crust of a mess of mind food.
