Cop Shoot Cop – Release

it's taken me nearly 30 years to realise that Slackjaw is CSC's take on Foetus' Sick Man. It's only relistening to early Foetus material now that I see how influential Thirlwell was on Tod A.

what the hell did interscope do to cop shoot cop? that must have been the question on people's minds...

i know more guitars usually sounds like a good idea, but cop shoot cop's shtick was always that they were an anti-authoritarian rock band without a guitar player. what? an anti-authoritarian rock band without a guitar player? the truth is they had two bassists.

it's hard to understand how anybody else beside the label was behind the addition of a guitar player; they would have been virtually unmarketable as a hard rock act in 1994 without a guitar player. the result is a sort of jim morrison take on a standard collection of punk rock political ideals; this is actually a fairly successful wedding, but it's just not what would be expected from a cop shoot cop record.

excuse my bluntness, but the fourth through seventh tracks, inclusive, are just stupid.

tod ashley has a noticeable jim thirlwell fetish, but thirlwell's name is not on this particular disc. it comes out as a mocking bluesy swagger that dares the world to take it on, all the while bemoaning it's own materialistic flaws. it's a sort of open hypocrisy that invites and encourages your condescension. hidden somewhere in there is just a decent guy with a solid intuitive sense of justice - and a wicked sense of humour - that just can't fucking deal with the fact that important decisions are made by those with less stringent morals. tod ashley's writing was always the centerpiece of this act. it's the typical "decent and moral guy trying to make sense of a messed up world" kind of thing.

it is ashley's personality that makes the disc hard to judge. by all objective standards, it should be a dismal failure - they sold out to the label, destroyed their trademark sound and produced a generic record in the process. yet, this is why you're supposed to pity the character - because he does things like this, then fills the record up with anti-authoritarian rants. what else would cop shoot cop fans have really expected?

it is the fact that ashley's personality was easily transferable from an off-the-wall no-wave act to a radio friendly modern rock act that allows me to cautiously suggest that the record is worth ing, if you can handle radio friendly modern rock; the truth is that, by modern rock standards, this is a conceptually deep record with a larger than average palette of references.

it is when ashley's bombast intersects with big band horn and tom sections that the record hits it's highest points, which are also it's most absurdly surreal ones.