Quando Quango "Pigs & Battleships" Review

QUANGO QUANGO

Pigs & Battleships (Factory)

HAPPILY, QUANGO have slipped thataway. Flinging off the (s)light, merry dabbling and friendly jingles of 'Love Tempo' and ‘Atom Rock', 'Pigs' sees QQ skipping past the pigeonholes, seizing you by the heels and dipping into a colourful lucky-bag of rhythms (salsa, funk, latin, calypso, you-name-it) with a deliciously contagious ingenuity and ease.

'Rebel' aside, 'Pigs’ is more Slits and less Modem Romance than before, with Gonnie Rietveld’s artfully Ari-ish phrasing and footing taking over from Mike Pickering’s dour chants and flat enthusiasm. From the frisky tricks and busy mischief of the opening 'Genius' and Go Exciting’ through the Brazilian 'Danger Man’ theme on ‘ST, the lovers rock-bubblegum of ‘This Feeling’ (Syreeta-sweet until some  pointlessly token toasting) and the closing cover of War's 'Low Rider', Quando are consistently  surprising and persuasive. Full of smart solos, jazzy trumpets, snazzy piano touches and cosmopolitan freshness, 'Pigs', has an impeccably perky spirit!

At times, the sound is still a little thin (they tend sometimes simply to fill in the spaces) and producer Mark Kamins hasn’t the dippy wizardry of a Bovelle. But even if we’re not talking the sheer style of a 'Lady Marmalade’ or Typical Girls’, the last thing to get this lively was 400 Blows’ ‘Moving’ and ‘Happy Boy' is almost Slits re-incarnate (The Slits being today’s most badty-missed group).

'Pigs And Battleships’ is like a bag of confetti, a rubber superball, like space dust and fingerpainting, hopscotch and alphabet soup. It’s a very young recod. A happy record.

Jim Shelley