★★★★★
It was only right that, when the obits appeared for Malcolm McLaren, they acknowledged not only his skill and audacity, but also his ruthlessness and cynicism. All were to the fore when he put together Bow Wow Wow. It's well known that he halfinched Adam's Ants and teamed them up with 14-year-old dry cleaning assistant Myant Myant Aye Dunn Lwin as vocalist; but, as Adam tells the story in his autobiography, he also, astonishingly, walked away with a £1,000 "consultant's fee"...
- www.recordcollectormag.com
2010-12-21
★★★★★
Formed around the original Ants, Bow Wow Wow were often dismissed as a cheap and nasty imitation of Adam's tribal formula. If anything, they were bolder, singing about tape piracy ("C30, C60, C90, Go!") and satanism ("Prince Of Darkness") while their Burundi-Drummers-meets-Ennio-Morricone interface often left the Ants trailing. The somewhat dubious exploitation of teenage singer Annabella Lu Win aside (itself predictive of today's media perviness in the age of t.A.t.U...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2010-06-19
★★★★★
Mike Chapman adds few if any hooks and Annabella Lwin shockingly little verve to their pattering Afrobeats. None of Malcolm McLaren's pubescent sex fantasies was half as dumb or exploitative as "Aphrodisiac." And though I'm glad they're expressing themselves, only the glorious "Rikki Dee" ("I work at the WC") tells me any teenage news I hadn't guessed.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-02-27
★★★★★
Ever the creative marketer, Malcolm McLaren bestows upon the world a compilation comprising the dubious if sexy Last of the Mohicans, a throwaway instrumental, and four cuts--good, though not top-notch--from the band's still estimable debut LP for this label. Which is preferred unless you don't own "Louis Quatorze" in one of its proliferating versions, and maybe even if you do.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-02-27
★★★★★
You don't play Afrobeats with a surf band's chops--what makes real African music captivating is a tonal range so subtle it creates little hooks among the polyrhythms. Yet a lot of this transcends its own klutziness. M. McLaren's propagandistic conceits are so outrageous they're comical, especially in a little samba called "Hello, Hello Daddy (I'll Sacrifice You)" ("Eat the heart of my kith and kin!/That's what I'm interested in!")...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-02-27
★★★★★
Ever the creative marketer, Malcolm McLaren sticks the purportedly never-to-be-vinylized Your Cassette Pet together with almost everything else his latest victims recorded for EMI. Docked the max for lying.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-02-27
★★★★★
This Kenny Laguna-produced attempt to convince the record company that Annabella is Joan Jett opens with a cover of the Strangeloves' "I Want Candy" that isn't as pointless as one might wish--Annabella being female, the oral metaphors instantly evoke toffee-on-a-stick, and don't think Malc doesn't know it. There's also the nubile "Louis Quatorze," remade in what would be record time for anybody but Malc...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-02-26
★★★★★
Only two great songs on this eight-selection shorty--all the rest is Antmusic. It's certainly true, though, that Adam's old backup boys display a lot more verve and cheek and high good humor than the new ones. Not only that, "Sexy Eiffel Towers" and the sly, loving, brazen "Louis Quatorze" almost justify Malcolm McLaren's dubious project of inventing a sex life for his fourteen-year-old Galatea.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-01-05
★★★★★
Producer Mike Chapman, who had recently worked with Pat Benatar and Blondie, came on board for Bow Wow Wow's When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going set. Perhaps it's Chapman's involvement that finds lead singer Annabella Lwin sounding a bit like Debbie Harry at times. This 1983 album was also the first that had no writers from outside the band contributing...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
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