FUN LOVIN’ CRIMINALS

100% Colombian (EMI)

WHEN OSCAR Wilde enunciated that pearl of wisdom about us all being in the gutter except that some of us are looking at the stars, he hadn’t reckoned with the Fun Lovin’ Criminals, the ghetto superstars who stare wistfully into the gutter, diligently documenting all they survey. Needless to say, the picture ain’t always pretty but the soundtrack is sublime.

100% Colombian conjures up many images, most of them sleazy: crowded smoke-filled bars, bulging body-bags and a bleak cityscape of squinting windows in the city that never sleeps. Boasting titles like ‘Up On the Hill’, ‘The View Belongs To Everyone’, ‘Back On The Block’, ‘10th Street’ and ‘Southside’, you could be forgiven for assuming this is a geographical concept album of sorts, in the same vein as David Holmes’ excellent Let’s Get Killed.

The underlying theme throughout is predominantly one of depravity, decadence and desolation, save for the trademark tongue-in-cheek humour of current single ‘Love Unlimited’, a gushing tribute to the the original Mr Lover Man (“Barry White saved my life/And if Barry White saved your life/Or got you back with your ex-wife/Sing Barry White”); ‘Mini Bar Blues’, an hilarious blues number (featuring BB King on guitar) about the loneliness of life on the road; and ‘Big Night Out’, a funky tale of sultry supermodels and sexy (100% Colombian?) stimulants that ends with a rabble-rousing singalong reminiscent of the Alabama 3 at their most wasted.

The more high-browed criminologist is also well catered-for here. The opener, ‘Up On The Hill’, sets the tone for the majority of what follows: a simple, yet sultry jazz-tinged workout, delicately caressed throughout by a soothing bluesy sax. With “Up on the hill is where you’ll find us/Yeah, up on the hill that shit is timeless/Yeah, up on the hill it burns the brightest/Up on the hill/ Up on the hill,” as its catchy chorus, it’s as appropriate an anthem for the fun lovin’ crimin . . . sorry, fans that follow the fortunes of Dublin’s Gaelic footballers as it is for Huey Morgan and chums.

‘Back On the Block’ is a different sort of homecoming, written while the band were on the road with U2 last year, while the six-string artillery doesn’t attain maximum power until ‘10th Street’, a tale of a violent murder, featuring samples of a police chase and a barking dog who’s clearly been whacked out on Scooby Snacks once too often. After the infinitely more soporific ‘Sugar’, it’s amps-on-11 time again for ‘Southside’, a feast of screeching feedback, frenzied powerchords and a terrace-chant chorus that adds some blood ‘n’ gusto midway through the album.

Of course, no criminal worth his salt is adverse to the odd bit of theft, and those of the hedonistic, fun lovin’ variety are no exception, as they proved when they upset Quentin Tarantino by “borrowing” a sample from Pulp Fiction for their trademark toon, ‘Scooby Snacks’. Here, they’re at it again, and while I only got handed a preview tape, I’ll be very surprised if The Rolling Stones don’t get thanked profusely on the CD booklet of the finished article. Put it this way, ‘Korean Bodega’ doesn’t just sound like ‘Not Fade Away’, it is ‘Not Fade Away’.

There are no obvious duds on this opus, but ‘We Are All Very Worried About You’, ‘All For Self’ and ‘All My Time Is Gone’ seem like mere gristle compared to some of 100% Colombian’s meatier cuts. With more stringent quality control, this could have been a blemish free classic. As it is, it’s still an obvious contender for Album of the Year. (If you’re still not convinced, there’s always the hidden track, ‘Fisty Nuts’, a review of which will appear on this page approximately two minutes after you’ve finished reading the magazine.)

To borrow, and then unscrupulously mangle, a phrase from Hairy Bowsies frontman Ding Dong Denny O’Reilly – it’s fair to say that 100% Colombian is as New York as the Yankees, Times Square and getting your head blown off in a liquor store.

A more serious proposition than Come Find Yourself, the patchy debut with which they paid their debt to society, here we see the Fun Lovin’ Criminals return to the streets with a pristine collection of urban hymns recorded and mixed in a variety of locations around a Big Apple that’s clearly rotten to the core.

Barry Glendenning