There’s a lot I want to say about this album. Not only do I want to mention that it’s spiffy, but there’s other notes I need to make.
First, Ve contributorSuperFwend was going to do the review of this, and I couldn’t get a hold of him today, so I decided to go ahead and do it myself. I could waste breath rationalizing how this is my project and I want to do it just so, but nevertheless, it’s kind of a dickheaded thing to do. Sorry SuperFwend.
As for actually addressing the album, I feel it best to start out with a story.
A few years ago, a good friend of mine and I spent about a week and a half on a road trip through the northwestern United States. The only CD we had between the two of us that we could agree upon was Daft Punk‘s Discovery. We easily listened to that CD on repeat over two hundred times, and neither of us tired of it. Every so often, there comes a record that one simply can never get tired of listening to.
And that’s what I think we have in My Personal Holiday, the LP from Macedonian electro-punk band Bernays Propaganda. It’s catchier than the flu, and once you’ve heard it, you’re hooked. The album has a smart, engaging tone that keeps a foot tapping right up until the end. It’s very electronic, to the point where it’s effortless to overlook the band’s anarcho-feminist, vegan, straight edge, etc. influence. Perhaps it’s the language barrier, but the music on here doesn’t demand that the listener reflect on it’s intellectual message like most bands with similar interests. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if MRR passed up this CD because they saw it as nothing but lighthearted electropop.
Either way, it’s a fantastic little record. The band clearly knows how to make good music, and even when a song is downbeat, the energy remains constant in a way that’s instantly lovable. I feel like I’m beating around the bush here. This is really catchy electropop that happens to have a very abrasive political message, I think. It’s a fucking great record.
Also, in researching (AKA Googling) the band, I learned that they take their name from Edward Bernays, a public relations specialist who took the idea of propaganda into the twentieth century. He sounds like he’s probably a fascinating character.