ZZZ - Running With The Beast

There's no escaping it (and who'd want to?): new wave. Whether it's Blank Dogs conjuring up its look and its epic sweep with his "excremental" little gems, or the long line of easy-single "nu-new wavers", little changes: it is here, it is us. Manipulated, "touched up", worshipped, comforted, mass-produced, mocked, beaten bloody, guillotined in public squares, reduced to a dartboard target or to bathroom listening: it is us. It has a thousand faces, just like ours. It speaks a dozen languages, Dutch among them. It's back to stay, and who knows if we'll ever be rid of it.

As anticipated, today's "Beast" comes from the Netherlands, trots around on sharpened hooves and feeds on "enriched" tulips. They call themselves zZz, though for tax purposes they go by Bjorn Ottenheim and Daan Schinkel, the former a drummer and singer, the latter an organist. Looking at first like a couple of "krautrockers" gone sour, the duo debuted in 2005 with "The Sound Of zZz", a collection of mediocre songs paired with... mediocre production; their obsessions, however, were already clear: Comsat Angels, the "suicide" of Vega and Rev, Dark Day, Wall Of Voodoo, Sisters Of Mercy (okay, very original stuff...). What nobody expected, though, is a multifaceted, polished-to-a-shine "comeback" like "Running With The Beast", omnivorous, more "danceable" and pop without losing an ounce of its dark allure (the opener "Lover" and "Spoil The Party" are to die for). Worth highlighting here is Schinkel's delightful work on synth, Cordovox organ, Rhodes and piano, as well as Ottenheim's skill and cunning in switching between the most disparate vocal timbres and moods: a crooner suspended among icy clouds on "Amanda", a falsetto of uncertain gender (very "Sylvester-esque", if you'll allow the term...) on the sugary mutant-disco of "Loverboy", a sort of Henry Rollins in-law on a "Sign Of Love" caught between gospel and a Rip Rig & Panic-style rhythmic assault, and so on.

Not everything, unfortunately, is in its right place. "The Movies" feels out of place, sounding like Korla Pandit over a raw hip-hop beat straight out of early Beck; "Grip" and "Angel" are also short on invention, with the latter far too slavish in evoking the incestuous darkness of Andrew Eldritch's band. Cut from entirely different cloth, though, is the brilliant "Majeur", which (unbelievably!) shakes up 2/3 Elvis Costello & The Attractions ("This Year's Model" era) and 1/3 Suicide without causing nausea or heartburn, proving instead to be one of (last) year's melodic gems.

But it's perhaps the title track that stands as the summa of "zZz-thought": it starts out as post-punk with strong hard-rock undertones (the Cult come to mind, or is that still a strange comparison?), plunges into a ravine where Joy Division's "Candidate" takes on cherubic keyboards, regains altitude with a devastating acceleration and then, spent, lets itself die away in a Finnish-tinged inlay of synth and drum machine in the style of Passage. Enough to make your knees shake. Indeed, it's best to sit down and let yourself be lulled by the organ-led desolation of the closing "Islands", a heart of darkness in which, like blind Eyeless In Gaza at an orgy, we have to feel our way forward. Believe me, making new wave like this really takes a "beastly" constitution.

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05/02/2009