Album Review: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? by Chinatown Slalom
Chinatown Slalom
Release Date: July 19, 2019
Label: September Recordings
Now, I’m no medium, but I could have told you just from Chinatown Slalom’s name alone that Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? would be a genre-bending, weird, bold, and just plain brilliant debut album unlike anything I’d ever heard before. Literally every aspect of the album is both surprising and unconventional. I mean, even the method with which they released it was unprecedented. In the heart of the streaming era, one of the most important decisions that artists have to make is not what material they’re going to release, but rather how they’re going to release that material. And there is nothing more unorthodox than dropping a ten-song album with no lead singles. Yet, this whole no-shits-given approach, spearheaded by their “Everyone’s Invited” modus operandi, has worked for Chinatown Slalom, with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? garnering praise from bloggers and tastemakers across the globe. After having listened to the album at least five times over, I can attest that this wacky and serpentine full-length, featuring Red Hot Chili Peppers-style escapades, is one of the best new releases of 2019.
The ever-entertaining Chinatown Slalom doing their thing in, well, Chinatown. (PC: DoubleJ)
The group’s name derives from a stoned voyage through Liverpool’s Chinatown, and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? acts to tell the whole story of that night. It recounts the highs and lows, the raves and mellow spells, the planned and unexpected with stark contrast and crisp clarity. I’ve tried to listen to some of the standouts as singles, but the album truly plays better as a whole. Picking and choosing individual songs buffet-style eliminates the seamless transitions and nuanced story-telling that defines the album. Often full-length LPs can slip into dull monotony entering the B-side, with boring and uninspired track after boring and uninspired track blurring together, yet Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? deftly avoids this trap.
Chinatown Slalom keeps the album interesting by managing to expertly intertwine and layer songs while simultaneously keeping them pointedly different. The acid-fueled intro track, “Dr Marvelo & His Best Friend Corkie”, serves as the perfect glimpse into the college house parties that inspired Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. Its cacophonous and distorted introduction, smattering of auto-tuned vocals haphazardly shifting from R&B to hardcore hip-hop and back, and collage of background instrumentation are expertly arranged with just the right amount of maturity and restraint. A few minutes later, the soul-inspired gem “Where U At?” begins with Aretha Franklin-esque vocals that give way to acapella harmonies accompanied by a jazz-funk bassline. It also features some of the most wonderfully tongue-in-cheek lyrics on the album: “There’s a Big Conspiracy comin’ after me / And I can’t tell what they goin’ to say / But I know it won’t be very nice”. (I don’t know about you, but if I was the subject of a Big Conspiracy the least of my concerns would be whether or not it’s amicable.) That same deep bass from “Where U At?” carries through into “Just Love”, the token romantic piece comprised of highly-repetitive lyrics and resounding trumpet samples. Rounding out Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is the closing “People Always Say What They Want”. If it wasn’t apparent from the hand claps, repetition, rampant auto-tuning, and Beastie Boys-style interjected vocals, “People Always Say What They Want” is Chinatown Slalom just letting loose, a lively ending to an already entertaining LP.
With today’s pop music scene being largely dominated by homogeneity, it’s refreshing to listen to a new full-length that eschews the confines of the traditional formulae plaguing the genre.
So, the TLDR (“Too Long Didn’t Read”) synopsis of this review: Chinatown Slalom dropped one of the most amusing and intelligent crossover albums of the year. Stylistically, think Gorillaz meets Talking Heads meets Khalid meets Diplo with the eccentricity of the Beastie Boys and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. With such a motley list of influences, it’s easy to see the cross-pollination of divergent musical styles and the pure disregard for convention that characterizes Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. In this way, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? goes beyond a basic trippy psychedelic album to create a truly revolutionary masterwork. With today’s pop music scene being largely dominated by homogeneity, it’s refreshing to listen to a new full-length that eschews the confines of the traditional formulae plaguing the genre. Hopefully, more artists begin to see that good things come when “Everyone’s Invited”.