Shane’s Music Challenge: TRANSVISION VAMP – 1988 – Pop Art

Shane’s Music Challenge: TRANSVISION VAMP – 1988 – Pop Art
7/10

Ironically, as the old guard like Queen were calming down into complacency and schmaltz, there was a new wave of bratty upstarts rewiring pop music to suit their own manifesto – in this case, a manifesto cobbled together from reading too much university rebellion literature and an obsession with pop culture and – as betrayed by the title – a fixation on Andy Warhol’s disposable pop art.

Singer Wendy James purrs with equal parts unbridled, wanton, pussycat sex and art school pretention through this collection of tracks so wonderfully, wilfully poptastic that there’s no way this couldn’t have been a hit – or a guilty pleasure all these years later.

It certainly didn’t hurt that her blonde, pouty, sex kitten features and her upper middle class private school voice purring ‘just open your heart, babe, and you can start the revolution’, or telling ‘that girl to shutup’ got a million libidos racing. Elsewhere she juggles some tech-dance rockers (Trash City, Psychosonic Cindy), anarcho-slinky grooves (Sister Moon, Revolution Baby, Wild Star) with art rock (Hanging Out With Halo Jones, Andy Warhol’s Dead).

I love this album – always have, since the moment I first heard opening single I Want Your Love, which alongside Tell that Girl To Shut Up and Revolution Baby are the real treasures here.

Category: Shane's Rock Challenge