I normally have a rule when it comes to bands. I wait until they release a second album before I get into them. I happily broke that rule for Death From Above 1979.Thanks to CanCom when Canadian bands used to release videos, no matter how bad they were, Much Music or Much More Music would play the crap out of them. (Nowadays, they only play a couple hours of video a day.) When you factor in that the band also has a heavy Montreal connection they are gold for playing on anything Canadian. Don't worry, there are no French songs.
Well I never buy an album based on the first single I hear, especially from a new band. That's just a waste of money most of the time. But, Romantic Rights really got me interested. Then Blood On Our Hands came out and I lost interest, which is why I never buy albums based on the first single. However, after Black History Month dropped I was hooked and went out and bought You're A Woman, I'm A Machine.
Let me start by explaining the sound of the band. Sebastien Grainger plays drums and is also the vocals. I love this, because that was me in my first band. His vocal style is a mix of yelling, howling, singing, wailing, and sometimes whining. Jesse F. Keeler plays the bass and synthesizer. That's it for musicians. But the sound they make together I think could best be described as Motorhead meets H.I.M. with a dirty sexy dance groove, and punk atttitude.
The album opens with Turn It Out. Fast, furious, and brandishing a lot of Punk chest beating. Vocally Grainger reminds me a lot of Josh Homme, which means that lyrically you have to read or really pay attention.
The second track was the first single. Romantic Rights which is very Rob Zombie sexy. You can dance, intoxicate and get burning the bed crazy with this one. It's everything that rock should be.
Going Steady is a nice fast album filler. Not lame filler that you want to skip, but filler that sounds like The White Stripes run through an old cut up ten inch speaker. It's nice that way. I should also point out that this track is the first time the filler endings are used. Many of the songs have these odd little left over sounding pieces slapped on the end. Some tracks do it in a way I like, others don't. This one I'm neither here nor there on.
The sound I described on the last song continues on Go Home, Get Down, but the drums sound more Punk less Meg White, and that's a bit of a good thing.
I almost walked away from Death From Above because of Blood On Our Hands. Musically I didn't really care for it, and it wasn't until I used this CD as my soundtrack to screwing around on Grand Theft Auto III that I actually started to enjoy the song. This was also my first introduction to the extra ending I mentioned earlier. I hated it at the time, it's what really turned me off the song. Now I think it's what makes the song as good as it is.
Black History Month is by far one of my favourite songs of all time. This is the song that made me a fan of the band. I love singing this song. Like most of their songs, there aren't a lot of lyrics, just a lot of lyrics repeated. With this song the lyrics are etched into my brain, because they flow with the music so perfectly. "Can you remember a time when this city was / A great place for architects and dilettantes / A nice place for midwives and crossing guards / And on, and on... / Hold on children / Your mother and father are leaving / Do you remember a time when this pool was / A great place for waterwings and cannonballs / A nice place for astrologists and blow up dolls / And on, and on... / Hold on children / Your best friend's parents are leaving". Also this isn't my favourite song on the album.
The next song comes blistering along with a great speedy hook. Little Girl is just good fun and enjoyable. It's a bit like Surf Rock and has a great upbeat dance groove. It also moves into Cold War with little to no effort. In fact I find the switch from one track to the other often goes unnoticed by me, eventhough the latter song is different. It's much more straight ahead punk.
The album's title track has a rip roaringly fast opening riff, and it just continues from there. If it weren't for the chorus "Now that its over this weight is off my shoulder / Now that its over I love you more and more" being so singable, this song would be the only skip it song on the album for me.
Pull Out is the shortest song on the album at 1:50. Lyrically, it's not even close to complicated. It ranks up their with Discharge songs that way, including the punk attitude, and the title pretty much covers the lyrical content.
My favourite song on the album is Sexy Results. It's the last song on the album and I think it was a good call. It ends the album on such a high note. Musically it's very groovey. I mean get your horizontal mojo pumping slow, hot and heavy type groove. Lyrically well, the entire song consists of "Sexy girl meet me in the bathroom / Sexy girl call me on the phone / Woman friend take me to your bedroom / Let me show how I'm full grown / Sexy woman call me to your office / Sexy woman meet me after work / I wanna show you how I handle business / I wanna show you how the mail-boy flirts / My man wants to buy you something / He wants to take you out for dinner and dancing / My friend wants to take you out then home / Then home alone". How can you argue with that little fantasy? I simpily can't.
The part that pissed me off about this album is it was the only real release from Death From Above 1979. There's a remix album and some earlier singles/Ep's, but not anything worth getting. The band split up after the tour for this album ended. If it wasn't for the fans they wouldn't have even finished the tour, because the two band memebers got to the point they weren't even talking anymore.
Even sadder than that was they got back together in 2011 for a tour, but it seems nothing else has come from it. I just keep hoping for a proper follow-up album, and that it's not a let down, because You're A Woman, I'm A Machine was fantastic.
8/10 - content
8/10 - production
10/10 - personal bias
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