On Disc

Black Kids

Partie Traumatic

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BY Dave Morris   July 23, 2008 15:07

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If Reggie Youngblood’s voice sounds a bit whiny, he has at least two good excuses. The first is that Black Kids’ lead singer is trying not to buckle under the hype (aside from Pitchfork’s recent, baffling pan of the album) that he and his fellow Floridian bandmates have courted since releasing their demo EP last August. The second is that, even though Youngblood plays the sneaky, too-clever-by-half lothario in every other song — “I’ve Underestimated My Charm (Again)” has him shrinking from another man’s wife’s obsession with him — he and his band are really closet miserablists with a hard-on for a host of Brit glam and goth influences, from The Cure to Suede (whose former guitarist Bernard Butler gives the production plenty of over-the-top pop sheen). Their horny antics — both the synth-driven groove and the lyrics of “Listen To Your Body Tonight” are as libidinous as anything you’ll hear from anyone with a guitar in 2008 — are the inverse of the emo bands who recoil from sex while being obsessed with it. The chorus of “I’m Not Going to Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance” is flirty, but the longing in the verses is unmistakable (“You are the girl that I’ve been dreamin’ of ever since I was a little girl”). Aside from an unfortunate penchant for corny lyrical asides (the knock-knock jokes opening “Hit The Heartbreaks”), Partie Traumatic captures all the messy spilled fluids of promiscuous youth, including the tears. 

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