NEON NEON
Stainless Style
LEX067CD
Lex Records 2008
12 Tracks. 42mins58secs

Boom Bip, AKA Brian Hollon, and Super Furry Animal front man Gruff Rhys team up once again three years after they first collaborated, on Boom Bip’s second album, Blue Eyed In The Red Room. This time round though, they have embarked on a totally different adventure on board their Neon Neon vessel. Partly drawing on SFA’s fuzzy funky pop and Boom Bip’s recent electro incarnation, Neon Neon also encompass eighties Italo disco and power pop with hints of hip-hop here and there for good measure.

Following the pair’s debut single, Trick For Treat, released last year, and the absurdly catchy second offering, Raquel, Stainless Style proves an incredibly eclectic, colourful, sexy and cheesy affair, which, at times, sounds like Prince and new wave diva Cristina frolicking on a marshmallow bed. Stainless Style is based around the life of American car engineer and playboy John DeLorean, who is widely credited for developing the Pontiac GTO and who also worked for Chevrolet before founding the De Lorean Motor Company in 1975. But he is perhaps best known for his somewhat colourful life, which included seducing some of the most beautiful women in the world, getting just under £100 million from the British government to help setting up a plant in Northern Ireland and build the DeLorean DMC-12, made famous as a time machine in the Back To The Future trilogy, which closed after just a few months due to escalading costs, and finding himself embroiled in a drug scam when he returned to the US.

Stainless Style is clearly inspired by the man’s flamboyant personality and life, and it is perhaps most apparent in the musical angle chosen by Hollon and Rhys. They seemingly give up any remote notion of cool and collected and indulge in lush melodies, clichéd arrangements and tongue in cheek lyrics. I Told Her On Alderaan and Steel Your Girl are glistening slices of shameless stadium rock which could have served time in Miami Vice without sounding out of place, while Raquel, I Lust U, Belfast or the hilarious Michael Douglas pay tribute to early eighties electro-pop and cheesy Italo disco. Elsewhere, it is with ardent slabs of heavy duty hip hop that the pair support their storyline. If Trick For Treat could pass for contemporary, Sweat Shop or Luxury Pool, while perhaps slightly text-book, give the album its blingest moments.

To substantiate their collaboration, the pair have surrounded themselves with friends, including vocalists Cate LeBon (I Lust U) and Sean Tillmann, of Har Mar Superstar fame, who provides backing vocals on Sweat Shop and Trick For Treat, which also features Spank Rock’s Naeem Juwan, while Fatlip raps his way through Luxury Pool. Overall, Stainless Style is a surprisingly catchy and enjoyable collection of unlikely anthems which has the merit to never take itself seriously. As Neon Neon, Brian Hollon and Gruff Rhys step away from their respective musical grounds to create a gaudy and entertaining hybrid which shouldn’t be ignored.

4/5

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