Las Venus Resort Palace Hotel
5/5
It’s been so long since a classic dinner party album was released that we’d forgotten people ever had dinner parties. Not that they ever invited us in the first place, the idiots. Cibelle’s sophomore long-player is just such a home-dining classic, although it’s likely to dominate the conversation. But Las Venus… is also an outstanding party record, a blissful chill-out record and, most importantly, a proper old-fashioned, sitting-comfortably-at-home-listening-to record as well.
Las Venus… is a sci-fi fantasy concept pop opera (about the house band at the last nightclub on earth) of ambitious scope, which achieves a balance between accessible and insane, careening through genres the way Courtney Love does moods. The only constants are Cibelle’s honey glaze of a voice and a skewed world view that allows the garage psych of ‘Braid My Hair’ and the ethereal tropicalia of ‘Frankenstein’ to snuggle up alongside a lounge-jazz cover of Kermit The Frog’s unitary masterpiece ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’ and a spirited take on Raymond Scott’s ’50s jingle for Lightworks cosmetics.
