When it comes to Test Icicles, I’ll never quite Get why they’re the hottest defunct band since As The Sun Sets. I mean, yeah, they’re pretty good, you know, but … huh?
Then again, maybe I do Get It: They broke up in their prime after what, like an album? That’s a helluva way to build a legend, and members of TI have gone on to new, shittier projects that also get a lot of attention.
When it comes to “Boa vs. Python”/ “Dancing on Pegs,” (on thick-ass neon-green vinyl, totally Choice) it’s best to just ignore Side B. It doesn’t exist; it’s deader than a doorknob, more dance than rock and more C + C Music Factory than Joy Division. Ugh. (I actually might come to love this track after a few more listens; if so I will recant.)
Let’s focus on the good stuff, i.e. “Boa vs. Python.” There were a lot of post-Blood Brothers (with a twist!) bands out there after the Brothers got a major-label deal, but none of them made you dance like Test Icicles, and none of them made you dance in a jerkier, spazzier fashion.
Forget The Faint, forget Franz Ferdinand; this is where dance-rock got heavy enough — with ’80s fonts, no less — for the hipper elements of the indie population to embrace it, and people are still talking … Those flailing shrieks, random bursts of energy and seamless genre-mashing aren’t going away any time soon.
I only wish a band would have satisfactorily picked up where Test Icicles left off. Come to think of it, I might have been wrong about the nature of TI’s legend after all. Perhaps they’re remembered so fondly because their tracks ended in the desert and were never resuscitated.
It’s definitely fun trying to figure out why, in any event.
