Luke Dsico

Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Dsico – You Fight Like A Girl
[Spasticated Records]

On the surface You Fight Like a Girl is a pretty unappetising prospect. Starting with the album title, then there’s the band name (Dsico? Cut up ‘Disco’? Probably, ho hum…), this is underlined with the irritating tag-line ‘That No-Talent Hack’ and not forgetting the hideous cover art, an illustration of a Little Bo-Peep character with a man’s face super-imposed (likely to be Luke Collison, AKA Dsico). So, bad name, bad album title, self-mocking tag-line, ugly artwork. It all smacks of the never endearing concept of a ‘joke-band’. Then there’s the music, a lo-fi blend of 80’s sounds, corny synthesizer effects and Collison’s abrasive singing voice which only a mother could love. Yet, despite all these unappealing aspects, this album has a greater surprise in store, it’s pretty good!

Collison uses his limitations to make this project far better than you would expect. He knows his way around a pop tune and what he lacks in polish he more than makes up for in sheer commitment to his sound (which is reminiscent of (early) Machinations, The Fester Brothers, Kevin Dunn, Art Interface and a smidge of those 90’s pop cornballs New Waver. All in all not so much a ‘Who’s Who’ of musical history as a ‘Who?’). I admire the way he mines forgotten elements of 80’s music for his sound with squiggly synths, comical electro percussion and especially his use of backing vocals that are endearingly dated and all the better for it.

Despite sounding like he’s being strangled most of the time his vocals work adequately in a John Foxx/Pete Shelley kind of way, especially in tracks such as When You Gonna Love Me and Hungover Again, but when he does actually sing (well, talk/sing, as in the untitled hidden track that finishes the record) it’s almost, um, pretty. One of the best tracks though is the instrumental, the Human League-ish Rescue, and that sentence should tell you something.

You Fight Like a Girl sounds like, and probably was, recorded at a share house in Newtown in between pizza and beer but if you’ve a space in your heart for lower end synth pop, cheesy drum machines, simple pop tunes and a bargain basement kind of electro-retro it might just rock your world.

Wayne Davidson

1/ Belle & Sebastian - Push Barman to Open Old Wounds
2/ The Arcade Fire
3/ Sebadoh - III
4/Pavement - Crooked Rain
5/ Eliot Smith - Eliot Smith