Better than Sulk, the Associates' greatest single is both a relic and a ruse; a synth pomp-stomper, whose bracing melody and self-conscious treatment of (weary, paranoid) excess renders it timeless. Framed by a wobbly, schizophrenic dialogue, and by music that chimes with pearled doom, Billy MacKenzie's 'aesthete-rotter' vocal points up the song's ambivalence toward lavish discord: Engulfed by its own rebounded echo, an atrophied lion in the trophy room -- "Awake me!"

2002-09-10 - Jack Cormack