Much like the rustic Laura Ashley chic they seem to wear daily, The Paradise Motel, with time rapidly running out, sooner or later had to be dragged into the 20th century. And as with everything the London-based Australian group does, it is a graceful, subtle and often slumber-inducing process, and one which pays little heed to the fashions of the day. Rather, The Paradise Motel like to talk ‘artist’ unto ‘artist’ when it comes to dishing out their songs for remixing – sorry, reworking – and chart-bound dancefloor action is definitely not part of the plan.
Fatboy Slim and Phats & Small can rest easy, these fragile candlelit love stories are not for their modern trickery. Instead, just as heroin addicts share drugs and needles among each other, so the band have offered their mildly leftfield compositions to other mildly leftfield artists.
And the results speak for themselves. These, we’re informed on the sleevenotes, explain [I]”the way The Paradise Motel affect other people”[/I], which would account for Mogwai‘s half-hearted vocoder reduction of The Cars‘ ‘Drive‘ and, conversely, Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo’s ecstatic My Bloody Valentine wash on ‘Lee’s Trees‘. More revealing are efforts by Echoboy, Hefner and Bows – really, they’re not overly bothered by the band but they appreciate the work, thanks.
Sometimes the truth can be quite dull, actually.