Serious About Men
Slicker than a pair of plastic tits.
Celina Murphy, 17 Nov 2011
Here’s the thing. Sometimes I worry that The Rubberbandits are the only fully lucid members of modern Irish society, and that the rest of us are, metaphorically speaking, the ones walking around with plastic bags over our heads.
After a whopping one hour and 42 minutes of the Gospel according to Mr. Chrome and Blind Boy Boat Club, you can’t help but come away with an abridged view of Irish life. The embarrassing, disappointing and devastating chapters are laid out in front of you plain as day, albeit backed by an irresistible electro hop shuffle.
But who wants to listen to a gangsta rap album about unemployment, emigration, racial stereotypes, history and politics? Well, when you get your point across as outrageously and cleverly as The Rubberbandits do, I’m guessing a whole lot of people. Even without the ludicrous Limerick drawl and righteous attitude, few have described the plight of the Irish twentysomething as well as these lads do when they honk, “My buddies are in Boston and the club is graveyard bare/A naggin in my pocket but the barman doesn’t care… The Ireland that I used to love has now become a myth/Reminds me of an empty pub/A bra without a tit.”
Other times, it’s clear that BBBC and Chrome are simply horsing around, spouting priceless tales of putting Danny Dyer in a headlock, making friends with a six-year-old, and that awkward moment when you accidentally kiss Ice Cube on the mouth. While the on-point social commentary is ripe for the picking, plenty of tracks are there purely for the love of musical parody.
The 24-track double album, brilliantly-titled Serious About Men, includes effortless takes on dubstep (‘Buddies In Boston’), electrofunk (‘Spastic Hawk’), jazz fusion (‘Greyhound Shuffle’) and trip hop (‘Danny Dyer’), and bizarrely enough, lyrics like “I’ll cut your lawn if I can ride your sister” aside, their playful caricatures are not too far removed from a lot of genuine pop music. Suddenly I’m struck with the horrifying realisation that we are just one, maybe two Lil’ Wayne albums away from tracks as ridiculous the Vocoder remix of ‘Too Many Gee’ making it into the charts for real.
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