Search - Make-Up :: Destination-Love Live! At Cold Rice

Listen to the the gospel yeah, yeah

Kevin Parrish Claussen | 04/08/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"i first heard of the make-up through my boyfriend and he could not stop talking about them. when were in chicago we found this cd and it blew me away. i highly recomend it to anyone that likes punk or funk. i normaly don't listen to punk (i am a huge cure fan) but this really got me.it is absolutely one of the best albums that i have heard in 5 years. the second that you pick up on the grove of Ian and feel the bass you will start dancing around. i think that the strongest part of this album is the fact that it is live. i feel that is the only way to hear the make up. i have heard them on a regular recording as well and though it is good, live is way better. so, buy it."

Best Album of 1996 Award Pants -Down!!

R. Warner | New York, NY | 05/27/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Listen, I first heard this album when it first came out when I was a DJing college radio, and boy, did I play the living ... out of it!!! It still holds up today, and it's 2003!!! First of all, all the reviewers of this record are WRONG. THIS ALBUM IS NOT REALLY A LIVE ALBUM. IT WAS RECORDED TO SOUND LIVE. But they are all right on one thing - that this album is simply brilliant. Nothing short of brilliant. And they were INCREDIBLE to see live back in the day. They wore an assortment of matching suits at every show of a variety of colors. And you were expecially lucky to see them play in the yellow suits. Unparalled in sheer, raw energy, showmanship and charisma!! WOO!! But besides all this, Ian Svenonius is a real musical genius, even from the days of Nation of Ulysses. So ahead of his time. And If I were in the Make Up or The Makers right now, I would simply be spitting on the lame attempts of ridiculous bands like "The Hives" who are trying to make "music" (if that's what they call it) reminicent of this style. They don't even come remotely close to this stuff. And they should all sit down and listen to this record AND LEARN SOMETHING, for .... sake!!! We all know the real truth, Ian. And we say "YEAH" to the final judgement!!!!BEWARE OR BE ARMED, "Hives!""

Make Up is Lies

Tracing Error | NY, NY | 05/18/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"OK, so get this. Make Up should not be taken at face value. As they tell you, the listener, Make is lies. Make Up (i.e. cosmetics) is something you put on your face to cultivate an appearance. Make Up the band cultivates the appearance of a 60s soul band, promising a hedonistic liberation that is "revolutionary." It's humbug. That's not necessarily a condemnation. You can take it as a promise of a collective suspension of disbelief, or as a brilliant, fluent deployment of pop cultural signifiers. As they put it, "R U A Believer?" Make Up understand that mass movements succeed by earnest promise, though Ian's knowingness means that Make Up is anything but earnest. (And by the way, the Nation of Ulysses wasn't _actually_ a terrorist organziation, and Cupid Car Club did not actually want you to kill yourself.)



Make Up is about turning surfaces into depth, about the potential to make over your everyday life and society in general. Make Up is a critique of the earnestness of emo music. Make Up is about the promise of lies.



Destination Love is a great album. Musically it is based on tight funky r&b from the 60s but it has a little something modern. And it succeeds at synthesizing styles rather than copying. It really rocks (or funks) or whatever.



Sonically, it really pops--a truly great, tactile recording done on 8 analog tracks at Pirate House. It doesn't sound clean like a modern rock recording, nor does it sound processed like the Strokes, but like a modern version of an old soul recording. And like every "live" album of the 1960s, it's a studio recording with audience noise dubbed in--in a really really obvious way.



Lyrically, Ian spins phrases and concepts and tales like a master. He understands pop symbology. "There is an anvil up in the night sky/And it hammered out you and I" begins the iconic "You and I Against the World." It's always fun to hear Ian throw some sand in the cultural sandbox.



And culturally, it is time to give Make Up credit, like Nation of Ulysses before them, for setting the musical agenda, in this case for all the revivalist bands that followed.



Start here or with the singles comp I Want Some.

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