Pills 'N' Thrills and Bellyaches

FAC 320 CD/LP/MC

HONEST TO God, what are they like? In the 18 monthes since they were anointed and inducted as the new dance's nearest
thing to Saddam Hussein, the naughtiest lads in the world have wilfully mutilated every precious popstar's articles of faith.

They single-handedly brought pig-thick stupidity back into fashion, so that even clever people act dumb these days, loping
down the street like animated laundry bags and mumbling about top-buzz-this and better-draw-that.

By their consumption of anything stronger than a packet of resolve, the Mondays also did a better PR job for chemicals than
ICL. And the music papers duly grew glassy-eyed at the prospect of some genuine crooked drugheads to drool over.

Yet despite the music weeklies' self-appointed role as the Mondays' personal press office, there was always a strong suspicion
that the hit remixes of 'WFL' and 'Hallelujah' were little more than cunning facelifts by Vince Clarke of Erasure and remixer
Paul Oakenfold. And anyone who's heard their previous album 'Bummed', can testify that they could have hidden a multitude of
sins.

When Oakenfold took over from Martin Hannett as producer as producer from their first top five hit 'Step on" onwards, the
scam seemed complete. Happy Mondays would make dodgy records, Oakenfold would knock them into shape and the cash
would fall like rain.

'Pills 'N' Thrill and Bellyaches' is the album that will finally close the debate. It is good - very good. Ludicrously. expansively,
stupidly excellent.

Oakenfold's dancefloor lore (he's more or less the architect of club culture as it stands today) is of course an element here.
Hannett's predilection for the grainy and the claustrophobic meant that on 'Bummed" they sounded as if they were all playing in
a coal scuttle.

This record, on the other hand, has space, airiness even. But that's only part of the story. For Happy Mondays have broadened
their addled minds, and their results will make your jaw hit your dancing feet.

The old mixture of free-form acid babble and dumb couplets has...well hardley matured but certainly congealed more, replacing
their old dopiness with brutally funny short stories and acerbic dance grooves to match.

Happy Mondays are now making clipped dance music for the sophisticated, literate God rains his E's/God rains his E's all over
me", while the drums from De La Soul's "Me, Myself and I" clank away regardless.

When they release this as a single it will do ugly things to Top Of The Pops. Nearly a sugly as the things that occur on the sour
acoustic 'ballad'/shagging song, 'Bob's Your Uncle'. Ladies, do you seriously wish to contemplate being sodomised by Shaun
Ryder? It's your choice.

The Mondays have also made some repairs to a rickety back catalogue. 'Donovan' revisits 'Mad Cyril' territory, bringing with it
a humid House groove and comical gob-iron stylings. And the corpse of the late David Essex, so cruelly violated on 'Lazyitis',
gets the treatment again on 'Denniss and Lois'.

In common with 'Bummed' and their debut LP,'Squirrel and G-man', this is nasty, like watching winos fighting. But this time the
dunderhead noise and brain-death rhythms have become deceptive, drenched in self-assurance, hyped up either on
international acclaim or just expensive speed. It really doesn't matter which.

And this brings us to the DRUGs, which brings us to the real knicker-wetters of this frightfully amusing LP - the closers,
'Holiday' and 'Harmony'.

The former is a Mondays travelogue, a tropical schmooze with aeroplane noises and Shaun as drugs inspector: "I want your
pills and grass,you/You don't look first class,you/Let me look up your ass,you..."

'Harmony' is a typical doxy title - whatever improvements have been made in the music, the Ryder larynx is still a very blunt
instrument - and the song shambles obliviously towards the climax of The Beatles' 'A Day In The Life'. No respect, you see.

And oakenfold's sprinkling of fairy dust notwithstanding, both songs sound as if they're about to fall to pieces. So do hugh
chunks of'PTB' - which is all part of the charm.

And charm is where 'Pills 'N' Thrills and Bellyaches' scores. It has a wickedly intoxicating '70s groove where once there was
the sound of a slow-learners group loose in the toy box. It has a fiendish grin and it has the texture of horribly hugh success.
Too huge to die, too stupid to fail...it's time for Happy Mondays to start believing their press.