March 8, 2013
John Grant - 'Pale Green Ghosts'
Audacious stuff from one talented motherfucker.
8 / 10
Three songs in, former Czars singer John Grant brands himself “the greatest motherfucker”. You can kinda see what he’s getting at because, for his second album, he’s all but ditched the ’70s soft-rock sound of debut ‘Queen Of Denmark’ in favour of dark ’80s electro. The risk pays off. Grant’s rich voice dovetails beautifully with the silvery synths of ‘GMF’ and ‘Vietnam’, and he gets away with channelling The Human League on ‘Black Belt’. His lyrics are brave, too – see ‘Ernest Borgnine’, where he wryly references his HIV-positive status. He said it best himself: this is audacious stuff from one talented motherfucker.
Nick Levine
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