Miss Violetta Beauregarde may hail from Italy, but my ears are hearing California skronky-electro-skeezy dance-punk a la the GSL label, the sort of stuff that former members of seminal early '90s emo and screamo bands began to make after they realized how far that scene had veered from post-punk's liberating performance space, listened to some black music for a change, and realized they had some catching up to do. It's particularly fitting that Violetta's music isn't particularly Italian, because the kind of dance music she has imbibed — think M.I.A., Kid606, Spank Rock, anything Diplo's touched — is fundamentally sourceless transnational pick-n-mix that abolishes distinctions rather than celebrating them. Blending Baltimore club music and reggaeton holds at least the potential of an agreeable pop song, though; Violetta's aesthetic — one that speeds pop music drum programming up to atonal, Locust-y levels and eschews hooks for bratty incantations — doesn't. Rather than view punk as just one more style to munch on in the generic all-you-can-eat buffet, Violetta adopts its posture of opposition, making music that jars and demands a self-selecting audience. Bad move on her part — like I said, this music is really all about playing catch-up with innovations in pop music that have come and gone. Radical sounds demand radical thought, and Odi Profanum Vulgus et Arceo offers pale shadows of the former and none of the latter.
1. Flanger When You Die
2. How to Use a Good Idea Till It Turns into a Bad Idea
3. Adolf Hitler's Emotional Side
4. Max Cance and the Cockring Industry
5. Try to Misunderstand This One
6. I'm Wolverine and you're a Walrus and I'm Kicking Your Ass
7. Albanian on Radar (Laquiete Remix)
8. I'm the Tiennamen Squre Guy and You All Are the Fucking Tanks
9. Indie Bad, Gabber Good
10. We Had a Riot Doing Diacetylmorphine feat. Agent Pazz
11. I Can't Believe, Hedgehogs Have a Bone Inside Their Cock
12. The Dirty Between My Feet's Fingers (aka the Reverse Delay Revenge)
13. Amelie Free Youth
14. The Unbearable Lightness of a Farm Tractor
15. Welcome to the Land of Quality Snare
16. The Man Who Shot at the Squirrels (A Tribute to Glenn Benton)
More about: Miss Violetta Beauregarde
