20 greens, say the orange and blue-- 21 for the vinyl. Such is the bitch of imports, but shit, such is the lure isn't it-- why more American indie labels don't ghostprint from Europe shocks me. All's to say, Output keeping itself overseas might have been the best thing to happen to Colder aka Marc Nguyen Tan. Now, and for his sake hopefully forever, this gentleman weaver has import sticker authority, peddling flimsy replicas of rock history to the American lookyloo demographic who faithfully support the New and Obscure but still haven't heard a fucking note of Joy Division or Suicide. It's a killer business model: Two years ago this Colder guy came over here for CMJ and played at the Canal Room, stuck behind a smoke machine, chumming one chord and whispering "it's getting...COLLLL-DERRRR" for like, 10 minutes straight-- and people clapped! Time to get this guy a rap deal and watch the "French Mike Jones" flow like whatnots.
Listen, I have a big heart for clumsy stuff, the fake stuff even more. In some probably incriminating way, I like a good deal of the fake stuff-- e.g. the beat and a-go-go frequencies from South-East Asia, Radio Pyongyang, assorted gimmicks-- more than the real stuff, precisely because the language barrier and tooth'n'nails recording and palpably high stakes make otherwise straight Beatles rips pretty damn unsettling, and I value that. Maybe, maybe some of Colder's stuff could hit me that way, Paris on Curtis, what have you. But sorry, "Oh yeah tonight oh yeah that's right to-night"-- the song's called "Tonight"-- ain't clumsy, or fake, just bad.
So beyond Colder's better-formed lyrics, which somehow make them worse lyrics, what's changed from his debut Again? To his credit, now he has a few songs that DJs can play, like "Wrong Baby", a midtempo sway that fits nicely between Kraftwerk's "Numbers" and "Bizarre Love Triangle." Colder's got better guitar sounds too, and on "Losing Myself" they shimmy enough that maybe MTV will find room for a clip in whatever Road Rules segment it is where people come back from a dive bar or fight snakes in the desert or something. The album's last three tracks go back to mine, loungey numbers to cool down Heat's (wait for it) burners; had Colder picked one instead of three (my vote is for the painfully alone casiotones of "Fade Away"), he might have been onto something.
But vanitas motherfucking vanitatum, compare any of Colder's one-pace, quiet-loud, fizzy-ending jams to a Soulwax nite version-- there's nothing beyond the signifiers. Again though, that's the triumph of this whole operation. "To the Music", ostensibly Colder's coolest track, has all the things kids want right now-- guitars, "80s synth," stiff beat-- but proceeds like a knock-off vitton vendor, as if it's getting away with something. Maybe because it is.
