Haha, but seriously, what.

So apparently someone sometime decided that Sid Vicious and his ilk had a really good thing going with the whole 80s British punk rock thing, but what that sound really needed was to be run through a filter of 90s British girl-pop, and thus Shampoo came to be. Now, I realize that music is constantly shifting and evolving, and I listen to a lot of weird music, but that is probably the strangest concept for a band I have ever heard. It doesn't make any fucking sense. Who hears "I - WANT TO BE - ANARCHY" and thinks "that, but with Miley Cyrus"? More things in heaven and earth, etc., and the thing is, I actually kind of like it. We Are Shampoo (1994), their first album (and the only one anyone really cares about - most of the rest were Japan-only releases, because that makes as much sense as the rest of it) is certainly not the best album I've ever come across - no song ever rises above the level of "pretty good pop song" - but it's utterly fascinating.

It opens with their big single, "Trouble", which is a pretty typical pop song - a danceable drum loop and bass line, a catchy repetitive guitar hook, and a couple of teenage girls singing about how their parents will be angry with them for staying out all night. On the other hand, they're yelling the verses in true punk form, and this contrast drives the interesting bits of the album. Sometimes Shampoo wears the girlpop celebrity hat, such as in the completely over-the-top "Viva La Megababes", or "Shampoo You", both about just how fantastic and famous Shampoo is. Other times, they skewer the very pop culture they are embodying: "Dirty Old Love Song" talks about overproduced pop songs - "They're big and bland but they spent four hundred grand/ On the video." - and "Skinny White Thing" is not kind to its titular androgynous beautiful person. This is when they're not just singing veiled sexual lyrics ("Delicious", "Me Hostage"). Then there's the extremely out-of-place "war is bad and we should all get along" spiel of "House of Love", and "Glimmer Globe", which appears to be a post-apocalyptic song about a disco ball, because, again, none of this makes sense.

So, overall, a bit of a curate's egg. Overproduced, catchy songs at best, and several surprises in the lyrics and the attitude, but it's hard to believe, much as I would like to, that this is a completely self-aware parody of 90s culture rather than another couple of teenage girls trying and failing to make it big. Most likely, both things are going on here, but the album remains interesting and unique. For what I think is a purer take on the Shampoo quintessence, try "Bouffant Headbutt", an earlier single which includes the lines "The way you act is such a disgrace/ Now you'll feel a bouffant in your face" and "When we get you outside/ You're fucking dead." Never have I been so intimidated by a 60s haircut.

Also, an official Power Rangers music video was made for "Trouble". At this point, the only conclusion I can draw is that whatever shadowy cabal secretly controls the world has a really weird sense of humor.

Next week on Handful of Dust! The pretentious hipster bullshit of Skeletal Lamping by Of Montreal, and my extremely authoritative take on the world in general! Also maybe I will not separate the subjects and predicates of sentences with absurdly lengthy parentheticals!