Get Down with Get Back Guinozzi!
If quirky Europop with a dash of postpunk anarchy is your thing, then Get Back Guinozzi! may be the band for you.
Carpet Madness the debut album of the Paris/London band, Get Back Guinozzi!, was an 11th hour release in late October 2009, which has really grown on me since I purchased it last December. At first I didn't know what to make of this band. Most of their songs had a skittery funk groove similar to a lot of the early punk and post punk bands like the Delta 5, the Bush Tetras, the Gang of Four, the Mekons, Essential Logic and Au Pairs. Get Back Guinozzi! also has an element of self parody to their music similar to the space cadet schlock sensibility the B 52s.
I spent a good part of the early spring of 2010, only listening to their skewed cover of the great Junior Murvin/Lee Perry reggae classic
Police and Theives (also covered by the Clash on their 1977 debut album). I really didn't know quite what to make of their wistful, bittersweet cover a song that the Clash played as a firey anthem to galvanize all young punks, way back in '77. I grew to like GBG's post-modernist intrepetation of
Police and Theives and moved on to the rest of the songs which are all written by the two band leaders, vocalist Eglantine Gouzy and guitarist Frederic Landini.
There is a sense of mad giddiness that permeates nearly every track of
Carpet Madness and despite their plethora of influences Gouzy and Landini have crafted an album of highly original music that is a joy to listen to on it's quirky own terms. Get Back Guinozzi! is getting heavy rotation on my radio show and lots of play in my own Zune player. The first song is
Carpet Madness, the title song of the album:
The second song is their wacked-out cover of
Police & Theives that I refered to earlier in the post: