#LUSCIOUS JACKSON LADY FINGERS FULL#
So it's no shock that "Lying to the Moon and Other Stories" is full of slice-of-life material, from the abandoned wife dealing with post-breakup disasters in "The Things You Left Undone" to the wistful grandmother who finds herself wishing she didn't have such vivid memories of "Back When We Were Beautiful." But the fact that she sings as well as she writes - sometimes, even better - comes as a pleasant surprise. Lying to the Moon and Other Stories (RCA 67792)Īs a songwriter, Matraca Berg is famous for her ability to evoke flesh-and-blood characters in credible situations. Perhaps that's why the group takes such shameless pleasure in the exuberant melodicism of songs like the slinky "Sexy Hypnotist" or the buoyant, party-hearty "Nervous Breakthrough." All told, Luscious Jackson has never sounded sweeter. Luscious Jackson may be singing about guilty pleasures, but none of the three sounds as if she's feeling especially guilty.
Even better, the Luscious ones draft Blondie's Deborah Harry to add a little funky chic to the knowingly mocking groove.īut even as they make fun of such things, the women in Luscious Jackson never quite remove themselves from the equation - hence "Space Diva," a song that takes a few swipes at divahood while somehow embracing both the sound and the image. "Fantastic Fabulous," for instance, is a wicked sendup of the kiss-kiss insincerity of celebrity scenesters, with a lyric that would have been as appropriate to Andy Warhol's scene as it is to today's Viper Club crowd. That's not to say the trio has turned stupid on us - far from it.