Bubblegum pop and popcorn horror have more in common than namesakes that end up beneath movie-theater seats. Beyond the critical disdain heaped on each genre, both the music and the movies are drawn to the clichés of rock 'n' roll-era American teenagerhood: innocent girls, bad boys, proms, and the occasional bloody knife murder. In the 1980s, UK bands like the Jesus and Mary Chain violated girl-group song structures with feedback, while downtown New York was moving beyond slasher flicks to what actor Nick Zedd called "the cinema of transgression."
The Manhattan Love Suicides take their name from director Richard Kern's lo-fi 1985 short films, one of which starred Zedd in a gender-bending nymphomaniac dual role. This Leeds foursome's fuzzed-out dream-pop recalls not only JAMC, but also the willowy female vocals of C86 alumni the Shop Assistants. However, rather than revive the sexualized gore of the 80s movie underground-- or the black-leather tropes of recent retro noise-poppers like the Raveonettes-- the Manhattan Love Suicides' self-titled debut throbs with the giddy vulnerability of the scene that the NME's C86 compilation helped spawn.
The contrast between the haze of violent guitar noise and the tender pop sentiments just barely audible beneath gives the album its underlying tension. Appropriately, opener "Things You've Never Done" is at once a kiss-off and an escape. Between blistering put-downs, singer Caroline McChrystal tells a soon-to-be-ex, "I'll cross the miles off as I speed into a brand new life for me/ Who knows just what will happen next?" From there, the band's shimmying feedback rush carries our protagonist through lonely mornings ("Crush Whatever"), downcast drinking sessions ("Negative Push"), rampages against no-good boys ("The Evil Side"), and third-person tales of other love-wracked girls ("Suzy Jones"), all while piling on copious la-la-las, do-do-dos, and handclaps-- the transgressions of twee.
McChrystal and guitarist Darren Lockwood's previous band, Pop Threat, were a more aggressive beast, with song titles like "Sugar Fuck" and even distorted vocals. Here, the Manhattan Love Suicides telegraph their decidedly unmacho heritage with an upbeat but unnecessary cover of Beat Happening's droning classic "Indian Summer"-- the album's only misstep. Acoustic ballad "Thinking Is Killing Me" adds cello and finds McChrystal's voice sounding like the Softies' Rose Melberg as she complains, "You said you'd write me a letter/ But you just sent a postcard/ And that's really not the same." In today's downtown, that's how you make the kids squirm.
