All right, now: Mommy and Daddy are an electro-pop duo! They trade off yelping boy/girl vocals in the style of last week's most cherished new-wave band! They're better than A.R.E. Weapons! They're almost as good as stellastarr*! Their bass lines are fuzzy like adolescents! Their drum machine beats leave you with a smile on your face, which is better than anyplace else, if not then see a doctor-- results may vary!
Mommy and Daddy are shouting so loudly because they have nothing worthwhile to say. (Note to pop criticism's reigning PC police: not that there's anything wrong with that, OMG rockism suxxorz, etc.). They're also trying to drown out echoes of past electroclash entanglements, apparently a scarlet letter even in the twosome's own New York City. Yeah, but have you heard the new Fischerspooner album?
First up and last up on Mommy and Daddy's latest EP is "Confection", chugging Dumpster pop about wanting to take you home, sung by Vivian Sarratt. Then "uno, dos, tres, cuatro!" starts track two. Boy, Edmond Hallas must be embarrassed to be less clever than even Bono. After an irritating smoke-detector synth bleep, Hallas shouts something that sounds like "sodomy," but don't get your hopes up-- it's probably not.
Of course, that means it's back to Sarratt for track three, "The Now", with a desperately heavy bass riff and faux cowbell! After shouting "confection!" over and over in her first vocal, here Sarratt cannily mixes it up, shouting "now!" instead. On "Run It Off", Hallas keeps up his would-be somebody-else yelps over more drum machines and more fuzzy bass lines, dipping to a bellow for the refrain: "Run it off! Run it off! Run it off! Run it off!" Needs more faux cowbell. I could describe the remaining track, "Question Marks Followed by Exclamation Marks," but trust me, you've heard it all before.
Apparently Mommy and Daddy are big in Britain. (Bad joke: Your mommy would be big anywhere. Haven't seen your daddy, though.) Hopeless Google monkeys have compared Mommy and Daddy's 2003 debut-- favorably!-- to Public Image Ltd. Yeah, we read press releases, too and yeah, Hallas wants to be John Lydon. A better parallel, philosophically if not sonically: nu-garage nadir the Datsuns (hell, even Jet were at least catchy). When Mommy and Daddy shout, it makes the baby cry.
