(Chicks On Speed/EMI)

Put Chicks On Speed and 99c into a search engine. I guarantee that you’ll turn up 99 cent per day raw sex videos of group orgies and interracial parties. But look at your record shop and you’ll find evidence of the car crash trash aesthetic that’s made Chicks one of the more intriguing (not to mention rocking) groups around. And with electroclash finally getting the record sales that industry hacks have been predicting for the past five years, it’s marketable enough that EMI have picked them up.

“We never thought we were rock and roll, but it sure feels like rock n’ roll over here tonight” they observe on the intro to the first single of the album – ‘We Don’t Play Guitars’. It’s been all over Triple J, so it’s hard to imagine that too many have missed Peaches’ squawky chorus, and the all-conquering bass line and nasty beats. Made up of Alex Murray-Leslie (Sydney), Melissa Logan (New York) and Kiki Morse (Munich), Chicks on Speed started off as an art project – a twisted take on bands like ‘N Sync or New Kids on the Block. They performed covers (of the B-52s and Delta 5, among others). With everyone from Peaches, Miss Kittin, Le Tigre, Nicola from Adult, and Talking Head’s Tina Weymouth, this is a great album. And somewhat surprisingly, it’s not overwhelmed by the starpower of those guests.

The songs on 99c are political in the way that a lot of 80s punk groups were, it rails against the superficiality of capitalism and western society; but they’re clearly just as caught up in all that as anyone. So suggestions that listeners check out dissenting journalist John Pilger contrast with the tongue-in-cheek exhortation to “exploit yourself, before it’s done to you” on ‘Sell Out’. There are a few drops in quality – ‘Fashion Rules’ and ‘Universal Pussy’ sound like Marilyn Manson at their worst. But their reworking of Tom Tom Club’s classic, ‘Wordy Rappinghood’, ‘Love Life’, and the wickedly unlikely ‘Coventry’ are definite highlights. Their glue and staple-gun approach to recording and singing may sound a bit rough. But one of the coolest things about ‘99 Cents’ is that (like the whole electroclash sound) it’s both a celebration and vilification of pop culture. Along with Maurice Fulton’s new group MU, it’s great to have electro punk bands that don’t sound like they were put together by advertising execs.