4 / 10
Even five years after their international hits 'Six Underground' and 'Sugar Spun Sister',
Sneaker Pimps still attract celebrity fans. Madonna visits their Home Taping club and they,
meanwhile remix Placebo, Natalie Imbruglia and Sophie Ellis-Bextor - trouble is,
Brian Molko seems to have been the most influential on them. "I'll play your games with your sex
with electric shocks", they sing, incredibly enough. Blimey.
Still, having musically updated their original trip-hop with some extra dark ambience,
they should be perfectly placed for the current goth resurgence. Yet, despite 'Sick'
getting dirtily funky like a very lo-fi Prince and the title track's sinister Daft Punk
robotics, they're only periodically up to the task. Elsewhere, 'Smalltown Witch' is a
stilted one-dimensional groove, 'The Fuel' is packed with endless cod-epic swirls and,
with its laughably unconvincing boasts of sexual dilettantism, reads like a peek into
Molko's fantasy diary. Everything else, meanwhile, is either an overblown, or downright
clueless attempt at coal-black dance-tinged dynamics.
Further success should elude them. That, it seems,
is firmly restricted to the past.
Jim Alexander
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