For this five track EP on Germany's Crippled Dick Hot Wax, omnipresent artiste Lydia Lunch teams up with Los Angeleno instrumental duo Tommy Grenas and Len Del Rio, aka The Anubian Nights. Strange bedfellows? Hardly. The Nights' solid grooves are both live and looped, drawing on smoky bar jazz, Martin Denny exotica and electronica. Thankfully it's devoid of the tongue-in-cheek tackiness such a concoction could create. Lydia is simply, perfectly credited as "chanteuse". She is extraordinarily melodic here as she erotically exhales two short stories and an especially lusty poem. I imagine her words and voice are enough to make some homosexual men reconsider things. On 'Nothing But Trouble' she confessedly purrs "the trouble with being so bad is that it feels so damn good" then regales us with the sins of her trouble man. With an opiated whisper she tells us of a little man in the title track, "another hopped up bastard on a barstool" who'd "go in heat just like a little bitch" at the sight of any woman out on the town. 'Potango Tango' plays out like a horn-y Foetus production, Lydia insisting "your kiss tastes like an orgy" and "your kiss is my elixir" over a throbbing dance rhythm. The near instrumentals 'Guernicana' and 'Potango Tango (Rmx)' tastefully round out the suite. Everything from the music to the voice to the lyrics to the artwork is complementary on this release. I'm just about sick of it I've been listening to the damn thing so much. It's only April Fools Day, but I'm pretty confident this will be my top EP of 2002. -
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