Publication: Melody Maker [UK]
Date: July 6, 1996
Section:
Page Number(s):
Length:
Title: "Ho-Hum, More Sex"
Reviewed By: Taylor Parkes

CHAOS AND DISORDER
Warner (11 tks/39 mins)

IT'S so hard to get excited by a O{+> record these days. Personally, that makes me feel a bit guilty - I mean, let's face it, it's not as if he hasn't done everything in his power to avoid the onset of ennui. It's not as if he isn't trying. But still, seven months after the last record, the next record, and . . . Oh, you again. Is it just his bottle-factory work rate? Or is novelty truly impossible to sustain?

"Chaos And Disorder isn't bad - in fact, it's so (superficially) daring, all things considered, one suspects that someone'll be hailing it as some sort of lost classic in 10 years-but right now it just sounds pointless. It's not just that there's no 'Kiss' here, no "If I Was Your Girlfriend", not even a "Gett Off" - nothing, in other words, to rewrite the rules of the pop single in four minutes without even breaking into a sweat. It's that, however hard 4 strugglesforperpetual renewal, you can't shake the the feeling that you've heard it all before.

The new single, "Dinner With Delores' 'Dinner with Dehres/Must be some kind of sin/Like a brontosaurus/ She was packin'it in "- Delores, perhaps rather predictably, follows up the meal by "Watching dirty movies/Like some kind of whore' is sweet psychedelic soft-soul, but hardly helps his cause. 'Damn, Delores' yelps, rather hypocritically, 'Pickanothersubject,please!'

In my teenage years,the peculiarly hectic nature of O{+>'s sex life, specifically the fact that he so rarely ran into the kind of girls who say things like "What the f*i* do you think I am, some kind of slag or something?" was always something of a sore point amongst myself and my male friends. The fact that he now feels that he has the right to whinge about it really is a bit rich. But maybe that's just me.

Whatever. 'Chaos And Disorder" attempts to hold off over-familiarity by (mismatching a variety of styles, with varying success. 'Zannalee'' is a fairly straightforward 12-bar blues. "I Rock, Therefore I Am' plasters a rough, ragga-heavy rap across a rather dated funk jam. "I Will" is horrible: an Eighties soul ballad arranged, so it would seem, by the bloke who does the music for hotel porn.

Virtually all of it is actually very good. Virtually none of it feels as if it matters. Until, as is inevitable, O{+> next comes up with one of the most breathtaking and (in every sense) unexpected singles ever, there's this to take or leave.