Pepe Deluxé: Queen Of The Wave

- You know a band are comfortable with who they are when they proclaim with a degree of (highly Finnish) seriousness, that their brand new album is an esoteric pop opera in 3 parts. For anyone other than Pepe Deluxé I wouldn't make the time but... argh, who am I kidding, I eat up crap like that as if it were candy! It is fortunate for you, my dear listeners, that Pepe Deluxé can make adventures in pretentious idiocy like this, highly listenable affairs also. The foundation of Queen Of The Wave is like a pastiche of all the previous styles the band have dabbled in: an inter-genre-fest the mainstays of which are girl-fronted psychedelic pop of the 60s and 70s, highly funky, dancey beats, a sample heavy hip hop sensibility and a rich, cheesy, soundtracky ability to orchestrate, turning everything they do into an epic, nutty monstrosity. Within those ridiculously divergent bounds you'll hear snippets of other things abounding all over the place. One of my personal favourites is the celtic folk of Contain Thyself which, two thirds of the way through crashes into an enormous DJ Shadowesque backbeat, great! Queen Of The Wave is a cornucopia of ideas, there's a reason why the band take so long between records, creating these exquisitely worked oddities. They end up, especially on this latest one with way too many ideas, really, and the band just can't afford to allocate a single song to each idea. That could be exhausting for some listeners and if you're not prepared to put up with the overt zaniness then you will be put off. I couldn't bring myself to feel that way though, not once. I myself, could probably exhaust you, trying to explain the 19th Century cult novel about the lost secret of Atlantis upon which this is based, but I'm not going to, it would be a waste. The source material is just the crazy fuel, an excuse to go on what is definitively a musical adventure. I'm so glad those nutters over at Asthmatic Kitty have picked this up for distribution in the US. Pepe Deluxé are such infrequent guests in our ears that you'd think they'd just packed up and finished like most other 90s bands and you wonder if they've still got fans waiting around for them. Each time they return though it is with something new, bizarre and absolutely worth listening to and I am very happy to still count myself as their fan.

Chris Cobcroft.