Luxxury

by Eddie Robson

A genuine Luxxury item

"This mash-up of glam rock, disco and synth-pop, played at a thumping pace, comes on like a slightly nastier, sleazier Scissor Sisters fronted by Heaven 17’s Glenn Gregory, and we rather like that in a band."

Note to new bands: are you trying to come up with a mission statement that will catch the attention of a fickle audience in a heavily crowded marketplace? Well, please come up with something other than ‘One day we decided that all current music was boring and/or rubbish and formed a band ourselves.’ This may come as a shock to you but it has, in fact, been done and – IRONY ALERT! – is itself quite boring now.

This is how Luxxury have elected to introduce themselves and oh, how we yawned. Music’s been boring since 1978, has it? Riiiight, OK, if you say so: we’d better listen to you then if you’re the only interesting band we’ve had in a quarter of a century. Pah. But although we may have got off on the wrong foot, we soon got on the right one when we heard their powerhouse electro-punk. There’s no shortage of bands trying their hand at this style these days, but this San Francisco quartet have dashed to the head of the pack with their debut album, ‘Rock and Roll (Is Evil)’.

The band’s manifesto, as stated in the title track, calls for evolution rather than ‘keeping it pure’: this is slightly laughable considering that their particular blend of musical styles is hardly new, but at least they do it well. Plus, you have to respect a frontman who styles himself with the name Baron von Luxxury. Actually, maybe you don’t have to. But we do, because his mash-up of glam rock, disco and synth-pop, played at a thumping pace, comes on like a slightly nastier, sleazier Scissor Sisters fronted by Heaven 17’s Glenn Gregory, and we rather like that in a band.

Although synthmeister Devin O’Brien adds much texture to these tracks, Luxxury are more than just a standard punk band with added bleeps. The approach is more one of nasty disco played for pace rather than slickness. Throughout the album, bass player Sha Sabi ably channels the pioneering grooves of Giorgio Moroder, and very probably looks better in a pair of hot pants (a definitive judgement on this issue will have to wait until we get an opportunity to see Mr Moroder in hot pants), whilst drummer Rico Dali counterpoints the ragged edges with mechanised, relentless beats.

Over the length of an album, Luxxury can leave you feeling a little hollow. Their principal subject matter is lust, and with song titles such as ‘Dirty Girls’ (Need Love Too)’ and ‘Sex With Rich People’, and lyrics like ‘The night is alive and the girl is so young / She’s wearing Chanel and I’m under her thumb’, they’re not a band to engage the heart. However, they more than make up for this by engaging the feet.

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