I am a crack whore starting the day on corporate methadone. I am the beggar with a Toyota 4x4 parked just around the corner. I am the politician promising freedom through oppression. I am the fool who believes the writing on the wall was inked using the blood of forgotten patriots whilst whatever Nero was in power at the time fiddled until all the shipyards were shut. I, no we, are now the Stepford Wives.
What will the revolution sound like? Will it be three minutes of multinational conglomerate sponsored joy to the world? Will it be a cover of “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” by some Saturday night hero whose haircut cost more than feeding a family of four for a week? Or will it be something drawn large by the, now resurrected, ghost of originality who haunts Glasgow’s Thin Privilege? Perhaps it will for these four songs are infused with equals measures of reflected beauty and sheer brutality. Their collective call to arms echoes the glory of the heyday of Pil with what is missing being as relevant as what is actually there. You could even say that “Moloch Mouth” caused the band to breach the boundaries of the art house but, in your heart, you know that they only did so to steal the vegetarian canapés and give them to the poor. The Che Guevara t-shirt is soon abandoned though as “No. 1 Luddite” transforms Thin Privilege into a post punk re-inventors of all that once was tuned in and tripped out.
Never practitioners of subtlety, Thin Privilege use their surprisingly sharp sonic weapons in such a manner that arrest for the crime of promoting originality is nothing less than certain. No doubt few in these soulless times will care enough to investigate the evidence presented by this soon to be no more band but that perhaps matters not as, once again, the revolution has a soundtrack.