Stream: Andy Clockwise, ‘The Best’

Kevin Bronson on April 5th, 2016

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Andy Clockwise (Photo by Stefani Rossini)

Andy Clockwise can party with the best of them, but his recorded output isn’t simply bawdy, shallow dance fare. He can be bluntly acerbic, subversively humorous and even comically glum; he’s something of a truth soldier, using pop hooks as Trojan Horses for his biting lyrics. Clockwise’s overdue (it originally was scheduled for November) new EP “The Good Book” arrives Friday, and it’s another chapter in the L.A.-based Australian’s mood swings. Actor John Hawkes, Warpaint drummer Stella Mozgawa, Captain Beefheart/Sparks sideman John Thomas and Australian model/singer Holly Valance appear as guests, but Clockwise’s blaring baritone is the star of the show. While the previously released single “Open Relationship” is a dance number as likely to make you bust a gut as bust a move, Clockwise mines the darkly romantic New Wave of the ’80s elsewhere, as on “The Best.” The cautionary anthem “Cocaine & Champagne” is a flurry of cowbell short of LCD Soundsystem, with the singer intoning “Did it make you feel like you did in school / where you were always taught to play the fool? / Did reality take the crown off your head / And replace it with a single bed?” At seven tracks and 36 minutes (counting Hawkes’ spoken-word “Intro”), “The Good Book” reads like one, narrated by somebody with swagger. You’ve danced to lots worse.

||| Stream: “The Best” and “I’ve Arrived (The Good Book Pt. 1)”