Customer Reviews

Viva Dead Ponies

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I bought this recording on cassette when it first came out (more than 10 years ago) after hearing a aboutthe Irish band Fatima Mansions on NPR. It has continued to be one of my favorite recordings of all time. Fatima Mansions music is a strange clever mix of loud/angry/cynical/bitterness and exquisite sweetness. The singer (Cathal Coughlan?) has one of the greatest voices of all time. In a way, the album is prophetic: Jesus as portrayed in the title song, Viva Dead Ponies, is very much like the South Park Jesus! FM's other CD, Lost in the Former West, is also wonderful.

I picked up this album after reading a rave review in Rolling Stone magazine, not being familiar with any of Microdisney's output. I was struck by the strange juxtaposition of '80s pop and punk-rock attitude. Some of the tracks are amazingly catchy. "Broken Radio #1" could be mistaken for a lost Spandau Ballet song until a death-metal break comes out of nowhere and knocks you out of your chair. "Angel's Delight" goes from dreamy synth-pop to thrash in an instant, as Cathal Coughlan screams "Burn, motherf****er burn!" like an Irish Zack de la Rocha. "You're A Rose," "Thursday," "The Door-to-Door Inspector," and the motown groove of "Mr. Baby" are incredibly catchy, and its only the vitriolic lyrics that betray the fact that you're listening to a very angry man that would love to murder various members of the establishment such as police officers and the pope. The music is a mix of synth-pop and rock, and it often conflicts strongly with the angry, sometimes absurd, lyrics. There are a few too many short interlude tracks for the CD age, but other that this there's not much filler here. With its rather unsettling mixture of pop and sarcastic, angry, Britain-centric lyrics I can understand why this album wasn't a hit. However, the fact that it has almost been forgotten completely is a travesty of musical justice. My recommendation to music lovers is to get your hands on a copy of this album, if just to hear how effectively pop can be twisted into a tool of subversion.