Pros: It rocks and stentoriously hollers "f*** you!" to anyone who might oppose its artistic vision!
Cons: Beyond the known world, poetically and gracefully so.
The Bottom Line: Get it - it's great. I don't think it's really that scary - it's too produced, romantic and beautiful to have that effect. A vintage, caustic, hard-edged vista of freedom.
I bought it because I thought it was one of the coolest albums one could ever buy, and it was true. Also because it bore the promise of a pure artistic vision, which it delivers. As to another reviewer's comments on the line "Another night like this and I'll kill you!" rather than being so serious I feel there is an element of affection and black humour conveyed and intended in such moments of Robert's. There is a childhood pantomime-ish quality to it, like a seven year-old boy terrorising his best friend with blackly humourous and play-acting, theatrical, though sincere and venomous in intent, quality to it, Robert winsomely indulging in vengeance yet turning into something childlike and wittily silly before it becomes ugly and gets serious, all with punkish style and a sophisticated, devil-may-care, "f**k you!" sonic quality to it. The attachment of glossy, high-octane, passionate romantic desire and loving adoration in Robert's voice in its delivery creates an appeallingly contradictory and emotionally passionate effect. Sure it's purgatory, but Robert seems to always know how to channel these things with a razor-sharp ironic edge, from bear-suited caricature in the video for "Why Can't I Be You?" to his many other imaginary childhood and animal characterisations, from "The Caterpillar" to "Primary", "Dressing Up" and "Birdmad Girl", and the clip for "Pictures Of You". Polar bears, dotted across the landscape! "A Strange Day", as well as teary-eyed also bears strength and sweet, beauteous grandeur, complete release from drudgery and as such one of my favourite songs. A clear, cold, bold, intelligent statement. "Pornography" is a powerful treatise on art and beauty - that's what it's for, and that's what it says music is for, blowing away the mediocre bull of a thousand pop pretenders. I got this impression at their 2000 concert here in Melbourne, Australia. Lucky me, I have seen half of "Pornography" performed live between two concert tours here, something I never thought I'd get to see. Introducing "Pornography", Robert said that if this song had been at the top of the charts the world wouldn't be so f***cked up - his choice of words - and I agree with him! And I got my hands on an annotated set-list of alternative encores at the end of the concert! Aesthetically its stone-heavy drums evoke a world of statuesque, Victorian stone-beautiful dreams. Although these slamming drums would threaten to terrorise or exhaust you, they are deftly recorded and engineered to stop just short of that and instead effect a crisp, heart-pulsing, immediate electricity instead. "Siamese Twins" as well as being a lush musical treat is also another bitter-hilarious savaging-parody of co-dependence as well as a passionate cry of desire and for love. Blunt, frank statements of equal patheticness and poetry co-exist in a meaningful whole, a technique that is no more succinctly present than in "Pornography", and that's what makes the album stand out so much as well. Closing "Pornography" is a mightily deft precursor to the world of sampling. A dictionary of good rock and how it's supposed to sound!
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