PLEASURE FOREVER – Bodies need rest

(CD/LP, Conspiracy)

To do this band the honors it deserves, I guess one should go back and dig out my old records by the Slaves and The VSS, which I will do as soon as I find some time for it. By then it will be too late for this review, so I’ll give it a shot right now. But I do remember both bands very well and I remember doing an interview with Slaves even better. Three nice, relaxed guys, a little unsettled by the excpetionally cold weather in Austria and then playing in a squat that has never heard the word heating in its entire 15 years of existence. We talked about Prince, orange juice called Sonny and how to survive with nothing but a butterknife in the open wilderness. Oh yeah, and about music, and a lot of that, obviously. The three people in Slaves, who all played together in VSS as well, later on changed their name to Pleasure Forever. Before I get over with the history lesson, it should be mentioned that this band is also history, but that doesn’t need you shouldn’t be interested in this record and the music. Everybody constantly discovers music by bands that don’t exist anymore, so why would a posthumous release be any worse than one that is made while the band is still active? Remember the times you bought your first Nirvana-t-shirt?

“bodies need rest”, if I got it right, has four cover versions and four tracks by Slaves of which five are previously unreleased and three are ultra-rare. It is quite easy to spot the cover versions, though, because they are the ones that slip into a melodic refrain here and there. Pleasure Forever always had the knack of going from one part of a song to the next without making you notice that something wild and actually quite weird has happened. They just always made the strangest musical ideas go unnoticed. I think they did that by hiding them underneath a cloak of energetic yet warm post-hardcore-pop and demanded an open mind from their listeners. A mind that doesn’t see anything wrong with rhythm shifting or changing dynamics. A mind that wants to be taken on a ride of austere and strong licks, songs that work more on dynamic and energy than on structures. If you insist on a current comparison, why not take TV on the Radio for originality, Membrane or Boris for intensity and whatever Seventies Classic Rock band you can find on that sampler you bought from television for the Seventies prog influences. Stirr that up, shake lightly with ice and serve with a cut mango. And of course the band sounds nothing like those mentioned.

What a lot people always missed with this people was that there was a lot of fun and joy incorporated. There was a lot of fun and jokes on stage, the three members were a nice bunch to hang out with and after all their songs spread a lot of energy and shows were always a very positive experience. After all, is this really “Honey Honey” by ABBA? (The others are more in line with Black Flag, Germs and Alice Cooper). After all, you need a mind that is open for humour when going out and mixing your west coast hardcore roots with prog synthesizers and do a lot of other things that don’t seem to fit at first, but miraculously they do. And they rock your ass off. Or get it on with you, whichever way you let them. I never understood where people saw anything “gothic” in these songs, but different people, different ears, isn’t it? But to come up with The Doors as a comparison just because they heavily use an organ on some tracks, that is a little cheap, isn’t it?