The Moonlandingz may have started their life as a fictional band, but one spin of their 2017 album Interplanetary Class Classics shows they have more life coursing through their veins than 99.9% of all the "real" bands out there. When the Eccentronic Research Council needed to concoct a band for their 2015 album Johnny Rocket, Narcissist & Music Machine...I'm Your Biggest Fan, they called up Lias Saoudi and Saul Adamczewski of Fat White Family and together they came up with a sleazy, greasy glitter punk band. Using Saoudi's knack for agitated, slightly skeevy lyrics and his preening, prodding vocals, and a musical backing that combined the stomp of the Glitter Band, the insatiable drive of Suicide, the snidery of the Fall, and the knowing wink of Sparks, the Moonlandingz were born. To make the album, the ERC and Saoudi holed up and got the basics down, then they moved to Sean Lennon's upstate New York studio to make it even weirder. And it's really super-weird. What can you say about an album that features a track with Yoko Ono singing about Agent Orange lollipops while a chorus featuring Phillip Oakey of the Human League backs her ("This Cities Undone")? Or an album that has more than one song that sounds like it could have been lifted from Sigue Sigue Sputnik's demo tape ("Sweet Saturn Mine," "I.D.S")? Or one with a classic '60s pop ballad about strangulation ("The Strangle of Anna"), featuring the dulcet tones of the Slow Club's Rebecca Taylor intertwining with Saoudi's urgent whisper? How about a song that sounds like Shampoo's "Trouble," only it's about rabies and features fat synths that would make early-'70s Giorgio Moroder green with envy ("The Rabies Are Back")? It's mostly that weird. Also, incredibly fun, hooky, and borderline bonkers. Every song is like a ransom note tied to a rock and thrown through a window accompanied by the raining of glass shards. Hard to ignore and very pointed. The guys from the ERC show a knack for writing the kind of songs that rock hard without being clichéd rock & roll, Adamczewski adds just the right amount of scuzzy guitar, Saoudi's lyrics are dirty and often hilarious, his singing of them is classic scuzzball '70s frontman, and Sean Lennon's production gives each element room to breathe while tying it all together in one glittering mess of fun. Special mention to the boulder-solid drumming of ex-Add N to (X) member Ross Orton; he holds down some seriously thudding beats and makes the album compellingly danceable. The Moonlandingz may have been a joke at first, a way for the guys at the ERC to have some fun and bring their concept album to life. Luckily for fans of ridiculous pop, they took it another step and made Interplanetary Class Classics, a wild work of twisted genius and more fun than rabies, that's for sure.
© Tim Sendra /TiVo