‘Confident Songs For Confident People’, the debut album from Melbourne’s Confidence Man, was aptly named given its dancefloor-friendly anthems full of come-ons, self-aggrandisement, and put-downs of crap boyfriends. For the follow-up, ‘Tilt’, they’ve lost none of their front, but have taken the sound back to early 90s house and big beat. Stand-out track, ‘Feels Like A Different Thing’, has the kind of huge vocals you remember from classics by acts like Black Box or Dr. Alban, and ‘Break It Bought It’ sounds like it should be on the soundtrack to seminal NYC ballroom flick Paris Is Burning.
Their signature humour is also here in abundance. ‘Toy Boy’ – described by vocalist Janet Planet as a “J-Lo slut jam” – contains the couplet “Rub you down in butter and serve you on a plate / They say there’s seven wonders but my toy boy makes it eight.” ‘Kid A’ it ain’t, but the feeling ‘Tilt’ will leave you with is unbridled joy. Each of its dozen tracks is expertly engineered to make you move your feet and transport you to an illegal warehouse rave on the outskirts of a provincial town.
Unapologetic bangers with tongue firmly cheek and a furious, feminist bent, ‘Tilt’ is the album you need in your life.
9/10
Words: Joe Rivers
Dig This? Dig Deeper: Black Box, Jennifer Lopez, !!!
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