You Love You is the latest record from New York based band Semi Precious Weapons, who have gained an international rep – and a little bit of notoriety, perhaps, in their role opening for Lady Gaga on her Monster Ball tour. But before regular Media Decay readers start to get perturbed by this sudden influx of pop review-age, do not despair, because Semi Precious Weapons are definitely rooted in the rock world, even if their work is infused with an element of self-proclaimed ‘trash glaMOUR’ (capitalisation courtesy of them, not me). SPW are, ultimately, catchy pop punk goodness, who know how to get a crowd going. It’s kind of all about the frontman, Justin Tranter, evident from the word go, if you examine at the cover of You Love You where all the other band members are wearing Justin masks. But if you had to pick a dude to focus on and pull yourselves from underground pop punk obscurity, the one in fishnets and sky-high spangled stiletto boots would be the one you’d go for, surely?
(I know I would.)
Anyway, the album! Onwards!
The first track, Semi Precious Weapons, is pretty representative of the band as a whole, and their live performance. The instrumentation’s fairly standard pop-punky, nothing that’ll knock you for six (my obligatory Commonwealth idiom for this post, sorry), with a guitar solo thrown in for good measure, but it’s a great track to rock along to, buoyed by Justin Tranter’s vocals and lyrics, in particular the SPW catchphrase of choice ‘I can’t pay my rent but I’m f**king gorgeous’.
Put A Diamond In It is a track you can envisage rocking along to at a show, with a repetitive and singable chorus, and command of ‘DANCE’ halfway through. This is SPW fancying themselves as rock gods – ‘who, who, who wants my baby? you, you, you want my baby.’ – something some of their die hard fans (‘weapons’, to Gaga’s ‘monsters’) surely hold to be true.
Magnetic Baby comes in third on the album, and will be familiar to longer time fans of the band as the second track on their first (now out of print) album We Love You (actually, three tracks from We Love You can be heard on You Love You in slightly different incarnations – Magnetic Baby, the aforementioned Semi Precious Weapons, and Rock N’ Roll Never Looked So Beautiful). And as a song that’s been part of the band’s repertoire for a little longer, it also has that raw rock’n'roll feeling that the first two tracks possess.
Statues Of Ourselves is perhaps my favourite on the album. It’s slower – though hardly a ballad – and the chorus definitely has an earworm quality to it. Lyrically, it has a little more to it than other tracks which are all about the quintessential glam rock lifestyle that they profess to live, it’s a little more… creative. For lack of a better term.
Sticky With Champagne was the song I personally had stuck in my mind after the show. Maybe because Justin sprayed the crowd with champagne during the set? Maybe because it’s almost painfully working to the whole trash glamour image? Either way, it’s catchy, like, it seems, half the tracks on the record are. And it’s kind of a great image. If you’re going to be sticky, champagne’s a good way to go, surely?
I Could Die is another shouty, jump-aroundy, feel-good-timey kind of almost-punk song that is decent, to be sure, but nothing unique on this record.
Leave Your Pretty To Me starts off with organ-tinged synths, which is a departure from the rest of the album. It’s slower, sadder, and it has strings! It’s still something you can bop along to, not entirely genre-bending, but it’s a pleasant surprise as you track through the sparkles and beer splashes of the rest of the record. One of the top tracks on the album.
Rock N’ Roll Never Looked So Beautiful has guitar solos to please most rock buffs, and some decent drumming to boot. It’s the first point in the album where, on my first listen, I was aware of the instrumentals above and beyond the vocals at some moments. That’s not to say that this is necessarily lyrically lacking compared to other tracks – ‘Sometimes I dream so big my life just seems so boring’ certainly isn’t… genius, but it’s relatable, and off-set by the likes of ‘sometimes I cry to make my eyes look bluer’.
And the album wraps up with Look At Me – channelling the same sort of spirit as Leave Your Pretty To Me, in terms of being slower and more mellow, but even further stripped down to guitar, a little high-hat and some piano. It’s an odd note to end on, in some ways, being so different from the vast majority of their work on the record, but it’s also a rather lovely song, so no complaints here.
I don’t know that SPW are a band I would have necessarily gotten into without being guided to them by the Gaga live show (I make no apologies for my Gaga-love, indie cred be damned), but they were fun to listen to and experience live, and their studio work continues proves them to be a pretty nifty musical extraction from New York’s teeming musical scene. Definitely worth giving a listen.
