- Supergroups have a bad reputation for a reason: all those egos and idiosyncratic creative processes coming together usually create a mess ... and not even a hot one! Brisbane’s Confidence Man, comprising members of The Belligerents, Jungle Giants and Moses Gunn Collective had just as much chance as any other iconoclastic showcase of cluster-f***ing it, but took exactly the right steps, from the outset, to get themselves some better results.
A few people have asked why the individual members of Confidence Man have all chosen those glammy stage names: Reggie Goodchild, Clarence McGuffie, Janet Planet and Sugar Bones. As Janet Planet confirmed in interview, it’s because this isn’t about the individuals or the bands they used to belong to. It’s about something new, a shared vision and sound; on a number of levels, it’s a pretty comprehensively thought out idea.
A convincing proof-of-concept for said idea was served up in first, catchy single, Boyfriend (Repeat). It channels any number of sugary, one-hit-wonders, like The Flying Lizards’ Money, or the The Waitresses’ I Know What Boys Want. All of these songs are united by being, at the same time, utterly throwaway pop and warmly treasured classics. There’s a deeper level to the band though, even as they seemed to be trying to make lightning strike twice with their second disposable pop classic single, Bubblegum you can hear the band tapping into a much more considered vein of sunny prog-pop / new wave / electro-boogie, echoing bands like The Polyphonic Spree, Tom Tom Club or The Go! Team. All this while trying to distract you completely by deadpan delivering the lightestweight lyrics about sugar, dancing and sex.
I’m kind of glad Confidence Man acknowledged their rather glaring debt to Yello with the cheeky, if not plagiaristic “chicka-chick-ahhhs” complementing the ptich-shifted vocals in most recent single Don’t You Know I’m In A Band. Sure, but whose band? Hopefully those urbane swiss gentlemen -or their intellectual property lawyers- take it with good humour.
Something that more seriously concerned me about Confident Music For Confident People: how many times can you do the vapid, spoken-word, Alicia Silverstone pop thing before the formula completely wears out? Listening to an album track like C.O.O.L Party I think I may have found out. Despite its upbeat electro-funk stylings and lush chorus vocals, it either takes a fair few listens to sink in, or maybe it just doesn’t work.
Fortunately -though Confidence Man haven’t let on with any of their singles so far- they aren’t a one-trick pony. For evidence see Out The Window, deploying a rather delicious ‘90’s hip hop beat and letting Janet Planet go all Soul II Soul urban diva on it. At least that’s where I thought it was going, but the song builds into the kind of warm, bleary, soulful Madchester classic that a band like Happy Mondays or their successor outfit Black Grape unleashed at their peak.
There are other surprises from the same era, like the bombastic but winning drum’n’bass of Better Sit Down Boy, which, like a few of their other songs has a similar esprit to Madonna’s dancier material. Well, it’s at least as gripping as anything she’s put out in a while. Then there’s the sample-tastic Let Me Catch My Breath which churns its wheels in the verse before exploding into gospel dance that’s very closely related to Fatboy Slim’s Praise You. It even takes awhile to let the bigbeat vamp it up in the back half, making you feel like you’re in for a dancefloor epic, though in reality it’s only four minutes.
I don’t know if you clocked the controversy over when a certain youth broadcaster called Confidence Man the “best live band in Australia”. A bunch of internet commenters piled on, baying their disapproval. It was so intense it was a bit shocking; sort of like that time America burned all its disco records at the end of the ‘70s. “Aw, where’s the guitars, it’s not real music!” That sort of thing. It was a bit horrible, but, when I thought about it I may have felt just a shadow of the same concern: like, all this meticulously created throwaway pop, was just a bit too successful at being disposable. After having listened to Confident Music For Confident People I’ve got to say, if it is rubbish, junk, pop trash, then it’s seven different sugary kinds of it. Like a carefully curated bag of pick’n’mix -and barring an errant piece of licorice or two- it’s delicious and I could devour it for quite some time, while feeling criminally little regret.
- Chris Cobcroft.