by Devon Chodzin (@bigugly)
There’s something funky in Cleveland’s water. That much at least has been clear since 1969’s comically destructive Cuyahoga River fire, the tragedy that sparked a thousand dirty Cleveland jokes. That said, the water might just carry the funk that has morphed the city into a fertile breeding ground for grimy, forward-thinking punk. This is the sludge that the post-punk professionals of Fashion Pimps & The Glamazons swim in every day, and their debut album Jazz 4 Johnny is a stew of affronting guitars, klaxonic synths, and frenetic lyrics uttered tongue-in-cheek, burning brighter than any river fire could aspire to burn.
Comprised of members of Cloud Nothings, Profligate, The Mind, and more Cleveland rock legends, Fashion Pimps & The Glamazons lunge forward with mutant post-punk, blending no-wave, noise, and more into an alarming yet danceable seven tracks that clock in under twenty total minutes. Each track is infectious, curious, and off-kilter; they stick with the listener like a cranial parasite, colonizing brainspace and inspiring disorientation. Fashion Pimps & The Glamazons sound like they had a blast recording the record (the “oh, fuck yeah” at the end of the opening track betrays that) and that artful whimsy makes Jazz 4 Johnny the ultimate party album for your local punk bar.
Jazz 4 Johnny opens with “Free World,” a rapid assault of dodging guitars and pounding synths that reveal the universe where the Fashion Pimps inhabit: “It’s a free fucking world / It’s a bucket of slop! / It’s a crazy kind of place / It’s fashion!” It’s weird, but it’s liberated; anything goes and it’s all in vogue. “V.R.” dials up the noise with breakdowns so abrasive and murky that one cannot help but want to throw their bodies around at a high velocity; hardly “dancing” so much as “convulsing.”
The title track is a high point, painting the portrait of a private jazzy performance with the kind of eerie camp emanating from their Cleveland art-punk cousins Donkey Bugs. The humorous irreverence continues on “L.A. County Critters,” while guitars warble with an intonation all their own and the synthesizer slogs forth at its lower register. The L.A. of Fashion Pimps is a hotbed of dirt and grime, a massive bog where freaks like them can soak.
Jazz 4 Johnny closes with “The Forest People,” barraging the listener with fearful narration of yet another mystical setting, another fantastical site for punk mythmaking. The guitar pushes and pushes and pushes forward until arriving at an unceremonious end. At no point do Fashion Pimps let up or relinquish the listener from their slimy waterboarding exercise. From the beginning of “Free World” to the end of “The Forest People,” droll punk antics propel everyone forward in a roller-coaster of oddity, curiosity, and vitality. This tangle of fun and fear is what makes Jazz 4 Johnny such an agonizing, addictive, and bizarrely enjoyable listen.