Review Summary: The most consistent record My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult has released in more than a decade. A great place for beginners to sink in and a lot to love for old fans.
Picture yourself in a Vegas night lounge with strippers on one side and My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, as house band, playing this album on the other. You go in take a drink and scan the place, listening to tales of sexual excess, drugs, deceit and luring strippers. This is the set where TKK's new album builds upon. It has a 60's feel, classy at first look, cheap and trashy upon closer inspection. They have never managed to sound more alive and organic since "Hit & Run Holiday" more than a decade ago.
"The Filthiest Show In Town" is a playful album that won't put a lot of fans to dancing this time, but it provides a fresh, modern feel of their sound that is more suitable to set the mood for parties. The songs are strong throughout the whole record, but the mid-section, 'Jet Set Sex', 'Me & Harlow', 'Sophisticated Living' or 'High Class Taboo', provides some really worthy moments. Usually a band's later work is compared mostly to its glory years, but the experience the band has gained and the attitude that came with it make the album an entity of its own, rather than just being built on past successful singles.
The production helps the album a lot, most notably because live member Levi Levi handles the bass, giving the album the more organic feel. On the other side, to give the album that 60's jazzy-lounge feel, there are lots of sax solos, trumpets and flutes over pianos, Rhodes and the usual keyboards, and even some jazz interludes at the end of songs like 'Jet Set Sex' or 'Me & Harlow'. Everything is programmed in great detail pushing the music in front and putting Groovie Mann's "whispery" vocals in the back to give them a more sensual and seductive tone. All these minor details give the listener the feel the band's performing live, rather than just blasting through the PA.
The lyrics are pretty straight forward, again exclusively related to love, sex and/or money, since their music has always evoked such themes ("Does it feel good when I look in your eyes? Does it feel good when ya kiss me tonight? Does it feel good when I feel up your thighs? Does it feel good when I slip it inside?"), and they are interspersed with lots of vocal samples, a TKK trademark. Groovie Mann and Pepper Somerset often play a dual role, him being the big spender, ("Rip off your black lace, let us gaze upon you. They're not making harlots like they used to. Silent accuser, diamond dust on ice - This is you"), usually narrator of the stories and her, the slutty woman/prostitute seeking money from men or a new life, ("I'm a supersonic, sexaholic, back door whore. Back off sisters! Lock up your men! I'm gonna take 'em all to Venus for a one night stand! I'm living in a world and it's upside down. Someone come and save me get me outta this town!"). It all ends up as a real fun role play.
This is the most consistent record My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult has released in more than a decade. A great place for beginners to sink in and there's a lot to love for old fans and even those who still cling mostly to their murder and occult themed first albums. It has its place up there with the band's classics.
