Atlantic / Wea
2000
The Menace
About This Album
The wait. That's all anybody listening for the first time to Elastica's second album, The Menace, will have in mind. Inevitably, with a five-year buildup, the first listen to The Menace will be a letdown, especially for diehards who bought the 6-Track EP -- the full-length album contains four of those songs, albeit in (mostly) re-recorded versions. That initial disappointment fades fairly quickly, however, since this is an ideal second Elastica record. Since it sounds like a quick sequel to a hit record -- a simple step forward instead of a great leap into the unknown -- it naturally would have made more sense in 1996 or 1997. Of course, they'd tried to record the album numerous times between late 1996 and 1999, so this material had been kicking around for a while, until it was finally cut in a concentrated burst of creativity. Elastica bashed out all 13 songs in a matter of weeks, and The Menace teems with energy and excitement. Where Elastica was smart, sexy, and hooky, The Menace is cerebral, dense, harsh, and dissonant, a culmination of their obsession with such detached avatars of post-punk cool as Wire and the Fall (whose Mark E. Smith guests on "How He Wrote Elastica Man").
Track List (try tracks 1,4,7,9 and 13)

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