David Candy: Playpower (CD on Siesta)

Band: David Candy
Label: Siesta
Title: Playpower

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Band:David Candy
Title:Playpower
Reviewed By:Laura Branch
Date Published:17/12/2001

Label:Siesta
Format:CD
Release Year:Label
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David Candy has got to be a teenager. Trust me. Of course, David Candy is really Ian Svenonious of The Make-Up, but he plays the pretentiously intellectual youth card pretty well.

Yet again, the age-old theme of duality is apparent on 'Play Power'. How do we interpret Mr Candy? Are his diary entries sincere, or a parody of us youngsters who feel the need to chart the minutiae of our mundane lives in purple prose? I think it’s both of these and at the same time more still. David Candy would just love this psychoanalysis. He wants you to think he’s a complex creature.

The opening track, 'Diary of a genius', lasts a stonking nineteen minutes and is largely instrumental, featuring that gauche psychedelia that is now a staple of the Siesta label output. The childlike music contrasts with David Candy’s overly earnest, almost priggish musings. In one breath he says “I needed a hobby so today I took up smoking // Technology develops and is utilised religiously, inexorably, despite it’s uselessness and/or harmfulness” This is all said onto a backdrop of organs, which sound like imposing, formidable church organs. David Candy, like God, should be worshipped and feared equally.

The element of “uh-oh this guy’s a weirdo” is brought to the fore in the cover of 'Lullaby'” from 'Rosemary’s Baby' – all he sings is “la la la” but it still makes you wonder what lies beneath his floppy dark hair and cute stripey college scarf - particularly so on 'Incomprehensibly Yours'. He begins by saying “Don’t worry I will always be yours” – Well, as soon as anyone says, “don’t worry”, you worry. We are seduced by his cute nasally American accent when he says “I already know you, I have always known you” whilst the cheery “ba-ba-ba-ings” carry on in the background. Even so, you’re left feeling uneasy and wondering if he’s one of those clingy sensitive types or the sort who has stalking tendencies and is liable to confess his undying love to you because you once sat next to him on the bus. Either way, he looks jolly nice in that scarf.

Once you get to the final track though, albeit a cover of 'Bad Bad Boy', we realise that there truly is another side to Mr Candy – he might seem bookish and a bit nerdy, but hey he’s “been a baaaad, bad boy” – when he sings this he sounds a little like Mick Jagger so you know he must have been really bad, although the reassuring harmonising ensures that it all ends on a happy note.

Love him or hate him, you can’t help but believe in David Candy. Of all the Siesta label records of this ilk that I have heard, I think this is the most well thought out – the combination of psych pop and charmingly earnest lyrics makes Mr Candy an even more vivid character, so much so that you can find yourself believing in him perhaps a little too much

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Playpower - CD

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