Hoodoo You Love

Blow Your Cool

Hoodoo Gurus

Elektra

THE HOODOO GURUS FINALLY TAKE their tongues out of their cheeks on Blow Your Cool. It's not that Australia's wryest band is selling out now that the Gurus are achieving major-label success. If anything, the band seems angrier than ever before.

As usual, songwriting Guru Dave Faulkner focuses his trenchant lyrics, on faithless girlfriends and confused, desperate men, but with a venom unfelt on the band's two previous albums. The song titles alone--for example, "Out That Door," "What's My Scene," "I Was the One," "Hell for Leather," and "In the Middle of the Land"--spell out these feelings.

The group delivers these songs with a fury that matches the tone of the lyrics. The twanging guitars of Faulkner and Brad Shepherd scream like fighting cats over the thundering rhythms of bassist Clyde Bramley and drummer Mark Kingsmill. Faulkner shout-sings over the whole squall. Perhaps deliberately, the Gurus' and Mark Opitz's production further intensifies the wall of noise effect by muddying the mix.

Despite all this wonderful noise and vehemence, the Gurus' usual anarchy and endearing pop goofiness seems diffused on Cool. There's nothing on this album that is as wacky as the title tracks of Stoneage Romeos or Mars Needs Guitars!. Even "Party Machine," a call to hedonism that is the least serious song on the album, sounds angry and harsh.

The one happy song, "Good Times," lies at the other extreme. The song is so happy that it loses its credibility, especially surrounded by all the angry songs. Part of the reason the song seems so complacent--and out of place--is that the Bangles sing the backing vocals on it. One of the Gurus happens to be going out with one of the Bangles, which is the only conceivable reason for their anomalous appearance on this album.

Faulkner seems to have custom-penned this piece of blithe, bopping banality for the California girl-group; he should have donated it to them outright. His shouting vocals don't belong on the same song as their syrupy harmonies, and the Bangles certainly don't belong on the Hoodoo Gurus' album.

Nevertheless, the Hoodoo Gurus still blow most other pop groups out of the water. As diminished as their anarchic tendencies may be on Blow Your Cool, their playing is still more intense than that of any synth band covering similar pop territory. It just seems that the Hoodoo Gurus aren't having as much fun as they used to.