CRAZY P
A NIGHT ON EARTH
Shiva Records (UK)

I have to admit that until this album landed on my desk last month, I’d more or less forgotten about Crazy Penis. While I rated both their 1999 debut album ‘A Nice Hot Bath With’ and 2002 follow-up ‘The Wicked Is Music’, I’d heard so little from them since that I didn’t even know whether they were still active.

Yet Crazy Penis were very much alive and kicking. While we in the UK were left wondering as to their whereabouts, thousands of miles away in Australia the Nottingham groovers were becoming the biggest sensation since the invention of the mullet. Unbeknownst to us, Jim Baron and Chris Todd’s new band were taking Aus by storm, playing to packed crowds of up to 9000 people a time. The quirky, genitalia-obsessed twosome had become a five-piece and were being treated like dance music royalty.

When this news eventually filtered through last month, it was initially difficult to take in. Crazy Penis always had the ideas and the talent to make it big, but they’d never quite got it together on vinyl. While the album that made them famous down under, ‘The Wicked Is Music’, was pretty good, it wasn’t that good. There must have been something we were missing.

The answer arrived in the form of ‘A Night On Earth’, an album that goes some way to explaining Crazy Penis’ move from second-tier support act to dance music headliners. Quite simply, it is their best album by a long chalk. Whereas previous sets had shown moments of genius amongst the so-so instrumental filler, ‘A Night In Earth’ reeks of quality from start to finish. The production is tighter, the songs better, and the instrumentals groovier. There are more live instruments, fuller-sounding vocals and better ideas .It’s a fantastically fresh and funky listen.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about ‘A Night On Earth’ is the variety – and quality – of the material on offer. Previously, Baron and Todd have rarely strayed from their successful formula of warm house grooves infused with a delicious disco-funk edge. This time round, they’ve tried their hand at ’80s soul (‘Turnaround’), jazzy P-funk (‘Lady T’), proggy downbeat grooves (‘Life Is My Friend’), glammy electropop (‘Can’t Get Down’), string-drenched melancholy (‘Sweet Feeling’) and straight-up, full-on electrofunk (the brilliant ‘Music Is My Love’). Such adventure could have resulted in embarassing failure, but every experiment hits the mark – and then some. There are, though, plenty of more ‘traditional’ Crazy Penis moments; the disco-funk thrust of ‘Bumcop’ (really), spangly hoe-down of ‘Cruising’ and Mylo-ish ‘In Deep’. These more familiar tracks work better when charismatic frontwoman Danielle Moore is at the mic, as on the upbeat ‘Kicks’. Moore excels herself on the album’s stand-out moment, the anthemic ‘Sun Science’ – a Big Chill/Carnival anthem in waiting of ever there was one. Just like ‘A Night On Earth’ is a future dance classic. Go seek – you won’t be disappointed.

Matt Anniss