Single review: The Chanteuse & The Crippled Claw – Are You One?
On hearing the name The Chanteuse & The Crippled Claw all sorts of images sprang into my head; femme fatales, smoky jazz clubs, cartoon villains and cabaret to name but a few. In reality the Chanteuse in question is Liverpool’s finest singer Candie Payne and the Crippled Claw on keyboards is Adrian Flanagan (aka Kings Have Long Arms). Together they’ve made a very appealing noirish electro pop track in the guise of ‘One Of Us’. It’s a fairly simple song but the atmosphere created by the dark keyboards combined with Payne’s stunning, sexy voice asking ‘are you one of us?’, which had me recalling classic British horror film The Wicker Man, is a sure fire winner. Flip side ‘Exit The Chanteuse’ is a very different story as it takes a stab at parody (I hope) of eighties electro. Payne forsakes the singing in favour of spoken word as she utters phrases like ‘that’s right it’s the shit’, ‘break it down’,’get your wibble wobble on, baby’ and even ‘wikki wikki’. I’m glad I heard it because otherwise I would never have believed it, but I never want to hear ‘Exit The Chanteuse’ again. Ever.
Mark Cousens
Out now on Arms Controller
No related posts.
