bad.squirrel presents...

Sportique - "Modern Museums"

Modern art meets pop music? Well, not quite, though Sportique's mini LP "Modern Museums" certainly challenges and provokes in fair measures. Its sparse, clean sound mirrors the vast open spaces of, say, the Tate Modern. There are broad brushstrokes of punctuated guitar and nice, tasteful splashes of organ (keyboards to you). Gregory Webster's cockney snarl comes across sounding all a bit punk as does the opening notes of "The dying fly" which points its unmanicured finger at the Sex Pistols' "Pretty vacant" and indeed "Definition seventy-nine" longs for those days of revolution.

In other places, it can sound a bit sixties like on "Icestorm" which reminds me of the Byrd's "Feel a whole lot better". The punkier "How many times...?" lists the usual cliches associated with artists in a most entertaining fashion. But despite its slightly aggressive edge, the songs are extremely catchy and is another fine offering in Greg's polymorphous career. My favourite moment is Greg screaming "I AM A REAL ARTIST!" no less than four times on the opening track much the same way Lydon might once have done. Whether he declares this ironically as a Britart peddler or genuinely as a musician is open to interpretation though I suspect possibly both. The sleeve has suitably modern art appeal and photos reveal the band's shameless fascination with the pork pie hat.

So unlike Britart, there's certainly lots of substance and content here, more than you'd find in a work by Tracey Emin or Sarah Lucas. Anyone for two fried eggs and a kebab?

Released on Matinee Recordings, 2002 (MATCD015).

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