Ssion - Fools Gold

01 - Clown

02 - Bullshit

03 - Street Jizz

04 - Fear Us

05 - The Woman

06 - Dayjob

07 - Warm Glove

08 - A Wolves Eye

09 - Ah-Ma

10 - HeavenAppropriately for music that makes smut sound so enticing, Fool's Gold vacillates between glossy disco and squalid electro-punk. Between the kinky "Warm Glove", the petulant screamalong "Dayjob", and "Bullshit", Critcheloe's voice, buffered by plenty of fuzz and the occasional sax squonk, finds a middle-ground between the late-1990s incarnation of Royal Trux's Neil Hagerty and a spit-shined Darby Crash. Despite the textural shifts, the optimistic sentiment stays the same throughout: like CSS' "Fuckoff is Not the Only Thing You Have to Show", or Scissor Sisters' "Mary", Critcheloe keeps his advice blissfully simple: "Don't let the bullshit get you down."



Ssion's tendency to weave sympathy and encouragement through the naughty bits-- erasing the boring distinctions between partying, sex, music, and boundless, delirious dreaming-- clearly aligns them with CSS, Scissor Sisters, and Junior Senior, their fellow purveyors of devilishly simple, self-reflexive, and undeniably catchy dance-pop. Fool's Gold kicks off with "Clown", a sinuously funky piano-driven disco jam that extols the virtues of using the club to take (not lose) control. It's impossible not to hear the refrain "pride, faith, heart and soul" as anything other than a statement of purpose, and in this context, the decision between living in the "trenches," or in a "house with picket fences" shouldn't take very long to make.