Felix da Housecat was unlucky enough to release his biggest hit at the height of one of the more ignoble fads in dance music's recent history. But Felix's "Silver Screen Shower Scene" sounds as good now as in the days of electroclash for one simple reason: His teenage training cutting tough-as-nails jack fodder for post-Frankie Knuckles Chicagoans meant "Silver Screen" felt honestly tough, rather than the feigned brutalism of those who wouldn't come within spitting distance of either gabba or a gospel a cappella.
It's tempting to say that Felix's music has been progressively less interesting as the decade's worn on because he refuses to let go of the context that briefly made him a pan-genre star. He Was King was described in the advance press as an "electronic pop" record, but Felix was never particularly good at "pop," while he positively fucking excelled at floor-ready craziness without much chance of crossing over. Like his track-happy peers in the Relief/Cajual era, Felix would have been barred from the Brill Building, but you also suspect he wouldn't have cared. And as for his later career, well, it was easy to look like Phil friggin' Spector when your competition was Avenue D.
So unlike, say, Basement Jaxx, Felix's pop moves have never been material you could debut straight-faced at an acoustic open mic. Even the Jaxx's lesser songs have a distinct personality, whereas Felix's attempts at trad catchiness sound like the anemic approximations of someone who stopped listening to the radio on Dec. 31, 1989, and forgot what was so good about the era in the interim. Take album opener "We All Wanna Be Prince", whose main crime is not its blatancy (kinda signposted by the title) but how enervated its pastiche sounds. Prince had no shortage of imitators when he was at the top, either. And in both eras, those who ripped him off knew to swipe some of his songwriting mojo, rather than just the lame sonic signifiers that scream "PRINCE" in 40-foot high purple letters and offer nothing on the second listen. "We All Wanna Be Prince" is so stagnant and obvious that you keep waiting for some conceptual punchline only to walk away with the dead air greeting a joke that fell on its face.
Most of the tracks you suspect Felix thinks are capital-p pop likewise toe the "joke or not?" line warily, from the titles on down. "Turn Me on a Summer Smile" would be a little cringeworthy even if we were trawling through demos fished from the dumpster behind an apartment-run twee label. But at least it fits the song's cut-rate Saint Etienne pastiche. Anyone who claims Sarah Cracknell lacks vocal personality will sigh at the off-the-rack girly club vocals all over He Was King.
But "Spank U Very Much" is the kind of entendre-flaying pun guys banging out identikit hi-nrg remixes would roll their bloodshot eyes over. Felix has never been afraid to be gaudy, whether good (the no-excuses O.T.T. house of his early days) or really, really bad (the avert-your-eyes cover art for 2004's Devin Dazzle and the Neon Fever). But the endless sing-songy chorus substituting for anything like structure, and the generic "pop made with keyboards" backing, means "Spank U" flops square in "eh" territory.
Like so much of He Was King "Spank U" can't even be bothered to poke the ass-end of awfulness in your eye, doubly sad when that lack of shame is generally a good thing when it comes to house music. This is, after all, a genre whose populist end has thrived for two decades on some pretty questionable purloined bubblegum hooks. So why do those 4/4 remixes of hardcore chart cheese work better than, say, Felix's "Do We Move Your World", a song so clearly aiming for that kind of ear-worm-plus-club-rhythm two-for-one value? Oh, right, because they had their start as pop songs, a venue where you go hard with your hooks or you stay home. The subtle shimmer of "We" is the about the only time this slightness feels like choice rather than necessity.
And here's the real rub: When Felix stays fierce, instrumental, and near-abrasive, the album scrapes greatness. "Elvi$" and "LA Ravers" are both no-bullshit house tracks, the former with a great rapper-with-the-hiccups electro break and the latter with some knuckle-dusting riffage that's a reminder of why we also continuing listening to Vitalic when we've recycle-binned our Fischerspooner collection. And the titular boing on "Kickdrum" is so big and baldly boorish it's like some Rotterdam raver flew one of the ladies of the Human League over for a one-off collaboration. Unfortunately a whole album of similarly DJ-pitched material, all the quote-unquote pop frills shaved off, wouldn't have allowed blog readers to devote the few days their attenuated attentions can muster for He Was King's singles, before the next this-is-kind-of-okay-I-guess electro-pop album arrives to distract them.
