Review: Gang Of Four - Content

Keep It Like A Secret circa 2011 is beginning to read like it's 1979 again. Just two weeks after Wire's rather fine Red Barked Tree comes Content, Gang of Four's first album of new material since 1995's Shrinkwrapped. The album title - which refers to the role of TV scheduling as a filler for the space between advertising - certainly befits the band that released the seminal Entertainment! And on the face of it, this sounds like the same band too; Andy Gill still fires metallic shards from his guitar, the dub-funk basslines (now courtesy of Thomas McNeice in place of Dave Allen) are present and correct, and Jon King still seems like a man with something to say.

And yet right from the first track, things just don't feel quite right. The nervous energy that seethes through She Said "You Made A Thing Of Me" feels forced; over a reverberating guitar line and a pulsing rhythm, King's overly desperate vocals sound like someone trying to prove something to himself, namely whether he can justify Gang Of Four's continued existence. And so it goes for Content in general, it's a little short of, well, content; the outer shell of GoF is there but the essence of the band is conspicuously absent (the band did always say that  "essence" was rare, after all).

With the best of GoF's work, Gill's jarring guitar lines and syncopations dictated the band's jerking and oddly danceable rhythms. The same applies to Content, on the pounding stomps of You Don't Have To Be Mad and You'll Never Pay For the Farm, or the reflective A Fruitfly In The Beehive. But all too often, Gill's fretwork feels like a signature piece, consigning him to rip it up in the opening seconds of a song, before new-boys McNeice and drummer Mark Heaney lay down a beat that never goes beyond serviceable. Somewhere far away, ousted drummer Hugo Burnham must be laughing away to himself.

On my review of Wire's Red Barked Tree, I remarked on how in touch Wire were with their former selves. In hindsight, I may have underestimated just what an asset that is to a band of such venerability.  The album is blighted by its laboured production - for all its apparent bluster and energy, the final product is oddly subdued - but even taking that aside, Content is the sound of a band desperately trying to rediscover  themselves. Does Content justify Gang of Four's existence? Just about; it's not a bad album by any means, better even than many might have expected after all these years. But equally, it's difficult to see just where the band go from here.

60/100

The Problem Of Leisure, What To Do For Pleasure?

I have been reading a fair amount of negativity on the subject of Gang of Four and their allowance of the song Natural's Not In It to be used in an X-box Kinect Sports commercial. "Sell-outs!" is the general cry. How could a band that wrote such insightful songs on the evils of consumerism (Cheeseburger, Natural's Not In It), the media's biased and desensitising handling of world issues (I Found That Essence Rare, 5:45), on the failings of capitalism (erm...Capital, It Fails Us Now), a band whose very name invokes the heart of Chinese communism of the 60's and 70's endorse that most consumerist of products, the X-box? Get over it, I say. These people seem to neglect the fact that when the band released their seminal debut LP Entertainment!, they were signed to EMI. Their later records were released on Warner Bros.

Hypocrisy? Not really. In Paul Lester's biography Damaged Gods, Andy Gill makes it quite clear that the band never set out to be heroes of the self-righteous variety: "It would have been easy to wave a red flag, to adopt a stance, to put one foot on the monitors and man the barricades...but we don't feel that's accurate". He continues: "A lot of the time we're describing ourselves as being WITH the enemy. We're complicit. We're collaborators. It's not a straightforward world, that's what we think". In an article in today's Sunday Times, Jon King remarks on the raised eyebrows on the whole X-box commercial affair: "I'm not going to apologise for doing what we need to do to get by." And that captures the true essence of GoFs lyrics; as people, they're as flawed as you and me, as the system that governs them, it's just that they're able to recognise those flaws in themselves. Whilst I deeply admire the bold ethics of many of the bands to whom GoF were a benefactor (Fugazi, the Minutemen), it was never what GoF were about. Their music provided (and still provides) an accurate socio-political commentary; it's not a statement of intent.

On the 24th, Gang of Four release Content, their first album of new material in some 16 years. My initial scepticism has been curbed somewhat by catching half a new track on the radio the other day. It sounded pretty good actually, like a more muscular version of the band that recorded Entertainment! and Solid Gold. It reminded me of how Mission Of Burma sounded on their reunion, a band which, sonically least, had more than a little in common with GoF. Whether that's a reflection of the album as a whole, I couldn't say, but I will continue to assess GoF on what really counts, their music.