Pop, there goes post-modernism. Because
Daphne & Celeste is the most vile of deconstructionist pop tarts, going all shouty-shouty and bouncy-bouncy for all your sugary needs before giving you an insidious wink of, "You didn't think we were actually serious, did you?" This album shouldn't exist. Not here. Not now. Corporeal evolution, elementary physics -- basic goddamn sense -- restricts any of this sort to come about in this day and age of misogynist rock, woeful indie snobbery, and the comforting idea that, like a teenage girl in front of a Lady From Shanghai length of mirrors, music can't stop obsessing over itself. Listeners were used to referential slop by now. They embraced the aging comfort of irony. But
Daphne & Celeste had to go and ruin everything.
Sure there are songs here, but does it matter? Deliberately misleading interviews, live bottling, fake bios, autograph smoke bombs, excessive exclamation marks, and ah, the lyrics -- you could combine 12 Jarvis Cockers, a very inebriated Oscar Wilde, and 987 office-trained monkeys and lo! They still wouldn't come up with a line as good as, "Listen to me/I've an allergy to mullet-head, see!" And those helium chipmunk
Shampoo voices (those voices!). KLF's Bill Drummond has to be behind this. Or William Castle. Or maybe
Andy Kaufman back from the dead orchestrating one big comeback hurrah.
Daphne & Celeste do for pop music what J.D. Salinger did for three-pointers (presumably). Sticking superficiality on a hot skewer while hitting all those post-modern dweebs in the mouth with a brick. You like pop music? They hate you. Dislike it? Hate you still. Think it's "so bad it's good?" You'll be dead by dawn.
This is agit-pop music for people who hate people who hate those other people who make pop music. Who hate themselves. Any fan over the age of 16 is a pedophile. Anyone under is a lost cause. And they both have a better idea of what's going on in this album than you ever will. Face it:
We Never Said That! is the utter dregs of the pop barrel, brilliant art stunt -- or both. The most exquisite, evil, cloying, disturbing, fun, shameless, astonishing, perplexing, stupid, and "what the f*ck?" album you'll hear in years. Don't believe it? It's got an
Alice Cooper cover, too. ~ Dean Carlson