Album Reviews

Album Review: Condo Fucks – Fuckbook (Matador)

By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 23 March 2009

I doubt I’ll never be offered a place in the Mystery Machine, but I smell something not quite right about Condo Fucks. It’s not just my nose, either. Those pesky kids have left in their wake, an apparent trail of evidence that winds back to the early nineties. To begin with, the album title ‘Fuckbook’ bears an uncanny resemblance to New Jersey’s indie ambassadors Yo La Tengo’s fourth LP ‘Fakebook’. Sticking with eponyms, Condo Fucks members Georgia Condo, Kid Condo and James sound a whole lot like Yo La Tengo’s current roll call of George, Ira and James. Physical evidence next, in the shape of YLT’s 1997 release, ‘I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One’. Carefully folded inside is a wonderfully kitsch presentation of forthcoming ‘releases’ on the Matador label. Alongside such timeless classics as Mick Smiley’s ‘All Smiles’, The Condo Fucks ‘Movin In’ appears. The list goes on, but it always boils down to this: with Condo Fucks, Yo La Tengo are clearly fucking with us. Allegedly, a recorded rehearsal session makes up the bones of Condo Fucks’ sixth album ‘Fuckbook’. At least this, I believe. All 31 raw punk rock minutes of the album go by without even a whisper of production or polish. The band has abandoned original material in favour of roughed up gems hand-plucked from the back catalogues of The Small Faces, The Beach Boys and The Troggs et al, and rip them up they do, but not quite to the point of utter destruction. Whatever they’re up to, the band definitely stays true to the punk ethos with the virtual unmarketability of the whole project. ‘Fuckbook’ acts as an AAA pass to one of YLT’s punk as fuck alter egos top secret jam sessions. Throughout, it remains the utterly unrefined product of effervescing hedonism. But never mind the bollocks, just crank it up. MB

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