[rating: 3]
The album artwork for this is a bloody great big number seven to emphasise the fact that Carried Away is People Under The Stairs’ seventh album. To be honest that kind of surprised me as I’d thought they’d just been re-releasing third LP O.S.T. every so often but changing the title and track names for a laugh. Mind you I should have known they hadn’t actually been re-releasing O.S.T. as at least that had one banger on it (super-retro party-bomb Hang Loose) whereas albums four to six were blander than a Sunday afternoon at Snow Patrol’s house.
Anyway, back to the matter in hand and it’s soon clear that Carried Away breaks with the last few albums in actually having something of note on it. And when I say ‘note’ I mean they’ve finally come up with a banger again in the form of Trippin’ At The Disco which has everything that’s been missing for so long – a big seventies-disco-breakin’ hook, a chantalong chorus and an uptempo beat all guaranteed to generate massive party-dancefloor action. Not only that, but some of the other stuff is worth checking out too which means this is actually better than O.S.T. 80 Blocks From Silverlake has a mellow soulful summer-evening vibe, DMQOT has a distinctive keyboard hook, Beer has a shouty call and response about beer (surprisingly) that you hope is Thes One and Double K being ironic about fratboy drinking and there’s skits too. Always a tricky one to pull off successfully – the skit has been the sand in the condom of many a hip-hop opus but the weirdly spelt Chicken Kabap (kebab?) doesn’t grate too much. It sounds to me like the exorcising of a demon – in particular one summoned during a late night munchie experience in London with a doner kebab – cue amusingly atrocious London accents. (Editor’s note: Should have had a Sheesh boys – everybody knows Doners are made from cows’ arses). On the other hand, Letter From The Old School goes for a Hang Loose kind of vibe with that Sugar Hill rap style again but sounds a bit too decrepit to party properly and then there’s the rest of the LP. Ah yes. The rest of the LP. Another eleven tracks – all of which sound like they were created when the random PUTS song generator got carried away. See what I did there? Still, like I said – this is all about Trippin’ At The Disco. Imagine if they did a whole LP of stuff that good…
Listen to People Under The Stairs – Carried Away