Kid Creole And The Coconuts - Tropical Gangsters
It’s a really fun record. It came out of that whole ZE Records stable, and I think everything that came out ZE Records is amazing. I think it has all the main qualities of a good NYPC record: that slight arch cleverness, the plethora of different influences which is obviously about August Darnell being a bit of a magpie, but mainly it’s just really bright and fun. It seems to inhabit a world we’ve lost now. Everything’s so po-faced and serious, even in pop music: it’s all about work and the grindstone, having to release 57 albums in the next two years before your fans move onto the next artist. Pop music can have a sense of humour, and that doesn’t make you laughable. ‘Stool Pigeon’ and ‘Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy’ are great, but once you delve into the record, there’s also songs which have more depth like ‘Loving You Made A Fool Of Me’ and ‘The Love We Have’, and I always feel like that makes for a perfect pop album. You want the singles to be big and fun, but you also want there to be loads of depth so there’s longevity and you keep on going back to it. This is the perfect example of it.