Pretty much all you need to know about Get Back Guinozzi! and their debut album, Carpet Madness, you can find out on their cover of Junior Murvin's roots reggae classic "Police and Thieves." Murvin sang it as a hazy, heartbroken lament, the Clash covered it with gasoline and set it ablaze. The duo behind Get Back Guinozzi!, Eglantine Gouzy and Frederic Landini, turn the song into a sweetly sung post-punk pop song with clunky drum machines, clangy guitars, and a general air of ramshackle glee totally at odds with the sentiment of the song. It's a perfectly re-imagined cover and it sets the stage for inspired cuteness that fills the rest of the album. The duo (plus occasional collaborators) scavenge the last 30 years of pop music and cobble together an impressively junky sound, there are bits of Tom Tom Club funk on "Low Files Tropical" and "Jungely," Delta 5-style skittery post-punk grooves on "Go Back to School," lo-fi dance-punk on "L.A.," indie rock balladry on the delicately pretty "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone," and loads of wonky pop hookiness all over the place. Out of all these influences and pieces of sound the band have accumulated, they manage to craft something that feels surprisingly original thanks to the charm and guilelessness they invest the songs with; also thanks to the incredibly catchy songs, the inventiveness of the arrangements, Gouzy's expressive vocals, and the fact that they sound like they had a whole bunch of fun writing and playing the songs. That sense of giddiness transfers straight to the listener and makes Carpet Madness a pleasure to listen to from start to finish.
© Tim Sendra /TiVo