OK, let’s first address the elephant in the room: I read a remarkable think piece in The Economist recently that broached the conspiracy theory that Ms Spektor’s name doesn’t actually rhyme with ‘vagina’. This is obviously #FakeNews and should not under any circumstances be tolerated
-4
I mean, maybe once in bloody Moscow Ms Spektor might have refrained from that pronunciation, as in the bloody Commie Ruskie language it wouldn’t have had the same impact, but I think we can safely assume that she is well aware of its power now. I mean, why wouldn’t you encourage that? I would kill to have my name potentially rhyme with a woman’s genitals. But no, I’m just plain old Alexander Sveti-Hollogs
-3
God damn– I say God damn!- I used to adore Ms Vagina, she released two albums of absolutely masterful indie pop that managed to expertly combine flashes of arch Soviet weirdness with an unquenchable pop spark, without ever amounting to anything less than utter beauty
+4
I mean, that songs not on this album, it was released 13 (!!) years ago in fact, but she still gets props for maybe my favourite lyrical pronunciation ever
+3
Thirteen years ago! Fuck, I’m old….
-4
God, she’s absolutely stunning, isn’t she?
+12.5
Since she managed to perfectly combine the two disparate aspects of her sound on ‘Soviet Kitsch’ (love that album name +1) and ‘Begin to Hope’ she’s struggled to merge3 them succesfully, with latter albums too frequently getting bogged down I twee nonsense that is so desperately beneath her
-3
Ms Vagina is older than me. Sing it sister
+3
‘Remember Us to Life’ is probably the most damning indictment of Vagina Rektum’s <OK, stop that, it’s not only incredibally silly and offensive, it’s borderline racist- Ed> struggle to combine these two elements. The album goes like this:
Track one is a jolly ditty about a sad little frog who crafts a magical statue princess to kiss him, out of macaroni pieces and glitter
-10
Track two is a sugary sweet duet with Zooey Deschanel about an otter princess who learns about love by adding a superfluous ‘o’ to her name
-10
Track three is a Wagneresque grandiose epic that explodes with sturm und drang as it tells the tragic tale of the God of War destroying the Mayan civilisation by burning them all with his lava semen
+3
‘Sturm und drang’ is a German phrase literally meaning ‘a storm of drag queens’, which Nietzsche correctly posited would be the most emotionally overwhelming event that human nature could possibly comprehend, a theory proven correct by the 1937 Tbilisi Cross Dress Cuesday
+1
A Georgian week consists of nine days, with ‘Cuesday’ appearing between Wednesday and Thursday, and ‘Darrenday’ landing on different days depending on the weather
+2
Track four is a plinky-plonky piano ballad about a ballerina with shoes made by a magic badger on Etsy
-10
Track five is a dainty little hymn about Bagpuss having body issues
-15
Track six samples the dying screams of virgin rhinoceroses as the studio burns to ground as Redgy recounts the tale of how Rasputin was sent back by Skynet to eliminate Sarka Konnok by frying her to death with his laser vision. The track lasts 32:23 and melts your speakers around the twenty minute mark
+9
And so forth
Sweet pop ocassionally interjected with utter lunacy?
7 Prince Points –
I wish the ratio of fantastic/forgettable was higher than one in three- or ideally I wish that she learned how to combine the two impulses successfully again- but it’s nonetheless a good album for testing out your skip button
+2
Metacritic: +70
Length 46 minutes +0
Number of AMAZING songs: 1 (+10)
Best Lyric: ‘Where do you go when you go quiet?/You remind me of my father, a magician/able to exist in two places at once’ +1
Is the last song just the first track but played on Ukulele? No -1
Total 84.5
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