Louis XIV - The BestLittle Secrets Are Kept

Thu 11th Aug, 2005 in Music Reviews

The Jet Rule:

1. The customary critical action of allowing a musical group to wear their influences on their sleeve, up until the point that said band receive either a) radio play or b) a major recording contract, at which point they will be labelled as derivative pap fit only for consumption by adolescents and the mentally unfirm: Dude, Are You Gonna’ Be My Girl was totally a rip-off of that Iggy Pop song.
2. The claim that Jet, indeed, rule:Hey, Jet fucking rule, you dicks!

Yes, there are two definitions of The Jet Rule. The latter is the more common one – assuming you can find someone willing to adhere to it in public – but the former is the one we’re concerned with here.

It’s one of the most important doctrines of music criticism: slagging off indie-rock favourites – Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, The Rapture et al – who rip off Gang of Four and New Order is unacceptable, because all those indie bands are so awesome and indie and they have cool ties and awesome hair and tight pants and not that many people like them. But when a band like Jet comes along, they’re lambasted for piggybacking their way up the charts by rorting riffs from the Stones. Success means you can get away with so very little.

Maybe it’s a double standard, and maybe it’s not. All I need to know is that the original meaning of The Jet Rule won’t keep Louis XIV safe from the vitriol of rock nerds. Just because they’re indie-rock and they’re named after a historical figure – God, 17th century French kings are so hot right now – shouldn’t mean they can get away with the kind of wholesale musical thievery that resulted in an elitist ban on Jet.

Louis XIV don’t wear their influences on their collective sleeve; you’d need an entire fucking wardrobe to fit them all there. Or at least a shirt big enough to emblazon The Velvet Underground, T-Rex, David Bowie, The Kinks and The Stooges in the boldest print available to man. I Ripped Off Heaps of Good Bands and All I Got Was This Lousy Record Contract.

The eponymous opening track is just a hint of the blatant, uninspired theft of Iggy Pop and Marc Bolan’s vocal cords by lead vocalist Jason Hills. On the single Finding Out True Love is Blind, Hills is literally indistinguishable from Iggy Pop. I’m not saying he sounds similar to Pop, like The Rapture’s Luke Jenner sometimes sounds like Robert Smith, I’m saying Hills sounds exactly the same.

The rest of the album is filled with similar ‘70s rock swindles. Paper Doll is pure T-Rex – admitted in the opening line (“Ah, bang a gong/Get it on”). Only towards the very end of the album do we hear any vague originality, and unfortunately it’s not very good.

All this theft, however, doesn’t mean Louis XIV don’t come up with some great bloody songs. Just like Get Born had its charms – there, I said it – The Best Little Secrets Are Kept collects some fine tunes, the single especially being one of the best songs The Stooges never wrote. I could listen to Paper Doll and Finding Out True Love is Blind all day and all night and not get sick of them. They’re examples of hyperderivative rock at its best.

And hey, it’s hard not to love sleazy gold like

Pull your skirt up a little bit
Pull down your top and show me a little tit

and

Sing, sing me a song
And bang me like the girls in Hong Kong

What Hill lacks in originality – and he lacks a lot – he makes up for with beautiful sleaze and dirty kinks. It’s just that the theft is so obvious, so blatant, so un-self-conscious that it’s impossible to take the band seriously on their own merits. As a tribute band they’re fucking spectacular, but until Hills stops listening to Raw Power in his sleep and singing 20th Century Boy in the shower, they’ve got nothing original to offer. You don’t get points for simply aping classics, even if you do it better than most.