IT'S A TERRIBLE AFFLICTION FOR THE dedicated art-rocker to be struck down with. Y'see, Mauro Pawlowski just can't seem to fuck things up. He's tried ravaging his vocal chords with heavy-duty fags since birth, injecting his music with occasional bursts of crunching metal nonsense and getting born in Belgium. And still everything seems to go frustratingly right for him.
He's even written a song about it here - 'I Can't Seem To Fuck Things Up' from eclectic rock nutters Evil Superstars' second album - in which he attempts to annihilate any hint of a tune by growling like a ruptured Marc Bolan while being crushed beneath a herd of slow elephants. And it's great. Bugger.
Time then to pull out all the stops. Buzzsaw glam ('BABY'), bloodstained Bowie ('If You Cry (I'll Go To Hell)'), Numan-esque twonks ('Oh Girl'), David Sodding Essex ('Laserblack'), tinky-tonk pianos, pure pop rampages, lyrics about shagging buildings and body-piercing, all seemingly recorded in a bus shelter - Pawlowski tries anything to make 'Boogie-Children...' unlistenable and shite enough to gain him respect as the Belgian Pavement. And then some tosser at NME goes and calls it a 'charmingly skewered mêlée of rock subversion - half Superstar's wicked twin, half Marilyn Manson on tune suppositories.' Second album, then. Didn't fuck up again. Shit.
7/10
Mark Beaumont
