At their peak, the Happy Mondays were hedonism in perpetual motion, a
party with no beginning and no end, a party where Pills 'N' Thrills and
Bellyaches was continually pumping. The apex of their career (and quite
arguably the whole baggy/Madchester movement), Pills 'N' Thrills and
Bellyaches pulsates with a garish neon energy, with psychedelic grooves,
borrowed hooks, and veiled threats piling upon each other with the
logic of a drunken car wreck. As with Bummed, a switch in producers
re-focuses and redefines the Mondays, as Paul Oakenfold and Steve
Osborne replace the brittle, assaultive Martin Hannett production with
something softer and expansive that is truly dance-club music instead of
merely suggestive of it. Where the Stone Roses were proudly pop
classicists, styling themselves after the bright pop art of the '60s,
the Mondays were aggressively modern, pushing pop into the ecstasy age
by leaning hard on hip-hop, substituting outright thievery for sampling.
Although it's unrecognizable in sound and attitude, "Step On," the big
hit from Pills, is a de facto cover of John Kongos' "He's Gonna Step on
You Again," LaBelle's "Lady Marmalade" provides the skeleton for "Kinky
Afro," but these are the cuts that call attention to themselves; the
rest of the record is draped in hooks and sounds from hits of the past,
junk culture references, and passing puns, all set to a kaleidoscopic
house beat. Oakenfold and Osborne may be responsible for the sound of
Pills 'N' Thrills and Bellyaches, certainly more than the band, which
almost seems incidental to this meticulously arranged album, but Shaun
Ryder is the heart and soul of the album, the one that keeps the Mondays
a dirty, filthy rock & roll outfit. Lifting melodies at will, Ryder
twists the past to serve his purpose, gleefully diving into the gutter
with stories of cheap drugs and threesomes, convinced that god made it
easy on him, and blessed with that knowledge, happy to traumatize his
girlfriend's kid by telling them that he only went with his mother cause
she was dirty. He's a thug and something of a poet, creating a
celebratory collage of sex, drugs, and dead-end jobs where there's no
despair because only a sucker could think that this party would ever
come to an end.
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