Spoiling It For Everyone

After all the cooked-up Milli Vanilli-style controversy over his debut Chickeneye (is it really his? Is he just the acceptable front for a geeky bedroom idiot savant? Does anyone really care?), Punk-Roc returns in defiant, boombox-rocking style.

Very much an album with two hats

on the hall table, Spoiling It For Everyone has its old and new skool bases well covered – retro electro stylin’ a la ‘Fat Gold Chain’ and ‘Hi-Fi Wrecker’ jostles for space with the muscular urban blues of ‘Knock ’Em All The Way Out’.

Like Chickeneye before it, Spoiling It For Everyone’s wide scope throws up an equal mix of jewel and shite. On the plus side, there’s the delirious abandon of ‘One More Bump’ to put a few superfreak inches back in your step, NYC grandstanding and beatboxing in the form of ‘The Living Sound Of Reality’, and the adrenalin riot of tuffboy anthem ‘Brooklyn Style’. But when he lets the focus drift, Punk-Roc is less than essential – ‘Glue’ sounds like an outtake from the last album, ‘Blow My Mind’ sounds like an outtake from Prince’s last album, and ‘Spring Break’, while promising a chilled respite from all the tweaker’s delights, ends up delivering a limp-wristed effort at jazz-funk. Not to mention his irritating reliance on tired ‘stereo test’ samples, cheap and all as the clearance may be. There is such a thing as false economy, you know!

Put all the best bits from this together with those from Chickeneye and you’d have an outstanding album. As it is, Spoiling It For Everyone will just have to sit on the shelf marked ‘occasional listening’, although Christ knows what sort of occasion that might be.