Pastel Vespa - L'anarchie

  by David McNamee

published: 26 / 10 / 2002

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Review

Pastel Vespa was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her mother was a street singer there, and had a pretty hard kind of a life. The only nice word she knew in English was 'Pastel'. She wanted her daughter to have a better kind of a life – a pastel kind of life… Pastel sings the hits her way, taking us on an orchestral cruise around the world with stories of people she’s met on her rose-coloured journey. When Pastel sings, nations meet nations – Kiss meets Kaempfert, Bon Jovi meets Steely Dan, Wheatus meets The Carpenters, the Sex Pistols meets Brigitte Bardot… Pastel Vespa to replace Kofi Annan! There will never be war again while there are beaches and sunsets and tequila and bright moulded plastic and an easy listening lounge band playing college rock radio classics! Pastel Vespa!! PumpActionSunshine vs. clustering tearsnsemenstain Indie Guilt foreverok? Check her version of ‘Teenage Dirtbag’, cos just when you’re hoping she’s going to chew our hearts out by changing the ending to Jason Biggs dying in a fatal motorbike smash as he races for Mira Suvani’s honour, or have them gracefully overdose on hemlock-laced Doritos in each others arms, eternal victims of the Maiden-heads v. Tommy Boys culture war, a heavenly choir of backing singers coo “I’ve got two tickets to Pastel Vespa baybee…” and everything’s ok forever. No love is an untrue love here, and unrequited love, being the truest of all, deserves the odd reward – even if it is having arrows twanged into your ass in a drive-by Vespa loveattack. Pastel Vespa was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Born in the most exotic place furthest away from Australia, where creator Fiona Thorn lives… Ok, so lounge Chumbawamba is aggravatingly pointless. And ‘The Girl From Ipanema’, despite out-Creeping ‘Creep’ in the HorrorPainEmotionalTorture stalkerlove stakes is just too obvious and tokeny here to be anything other than a glitch in the contextualiser program. Really, even ‘Creep’ itself would have worked better. Alanis Morissette’s ‘Ironic’, meanwhile, was always so badly-pitched that it just can’t even be likeable in an ironic sense (two lumps of irony with your tiki glass margarita, vicar? Three? Four?). Maybe an album of ironic cover versions of ironic songs that are so bad at being ironic they could only ever work in an ironic sense themselves would at least lend this effort some consistency, but here the song just sits its malformed self down between two great irony mirrors, reflected into infinity, beyond the point where we’re even able to locate the real gag at all, tell the sham from the shammed. But, oh, at least those comedy mirrors bent its ugly, unloved ass into something resembling poise. Even if its beauty is Weathergirl Foundation deep. …born of a post-modern relationship with such 60s role models as Astrud Gilberto and Claudine Longet… And Burt wept, please minus a zillion points from the SoulSavingPopO’Meter for including the biography of Fiona Thorn, the Australian comedienne creator of Pastel Vespa alongside Pastel’s own heartbreaking tale of love loss and love in the sun. Seriously, do you always tell the punchline first? The sleevenotes even have the indecency to label themselves ‘postmodern’. …born of a need for reverie, a desire for glamour and stylish artifice that often clashed with today’s jeans and t-shirt rock… And, oh gawd… sod it, yeah? The only difference between this and Momus, Pizzicato Five or random cool PoMo pop aesthete of your choice is that ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ is the happiest, sunniest, singalongiest skin of pop since Phil Lynott gargled on his jar-oh for the last time. And who gives a damn that these precious songs have been flayed, gutted and stuffed like decoratively splattered roadkill? Their pelts look so pretty wrapped in plastic, those beady little eyes have never looked shinier! Vespa! Vespa! Vespa!

Track Listing:-

1 In My Automobile
2 L'Anarchie Dans L'U.K.
3 Teenage Dirtbag
4 California Dreaming
5 Tubhumping
6 Evie I, II & III
7 Ironic
8 The Boys Are Back In Town
9 Girl From Ipanema
10 Living On A Prayer
11 Peaches
12 Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick
13 I Was Made For Loving You