Sneaker Pimps Grow in Talent, Sound Despite Ditching Dayton

Four Stars

Sometimes you've just gotta give up the girl.

After the band's first album, Becoming X, the Sneaker Pimps boys ditched vocalist Kelli Dayton of "6 Underground" notoriety.

Remade, the quartet released its superb sophomore effort, Splinter, an album that has yet to see record store shelves in the United States. Though Splinter garnered little mainstream success and traveled no further than its limited release in Japan and Germany, the boys were not much deterred by their temporary career dip.

Now, the Pimps are back full force with Bloodsport.

A partial puree of Massive Attack and Tricky, the Pimps' traditionally trip-hop rhythms have been marinated in sounds of the '80s and early '90s. Leaning on Bowie for both sound and the occasional lyric, while overtly emulating The Cure and Depeche Mode, this quartet trades its testosterone for androgyny and angst.

Without Dayton, the band has lost its former image, along with the allure of a goth-barbie frontwoman. But the four Brit boys have traded in the cumbersome style of Becoming X for a more winning combination of attitude and imitation.

The Sneaker Pimps compress instrumentals and electronics into 11 tight tunes that blow past the listener in an all-too-short album. Crushed against bruised lyrics, the music pulses in a strangely carnal pattern.

"Kiro TV" opens the album with a sinuous, pleasurably painful and breathy vocal duet by Chris Corner and a backing female singer. Discordantly detailing the story of fame, Corner quotes David Bowie of Ziggy Stardust days and -- of course -- mentions Kurt Cobain.

After this somewhat erratic opener, the album follows a course of electro-rock jives and melancholic meditations.

"Sick," which witnesses Corner's occasional falsetto forays, saunters through about four minutes of the vocalist's promises to change for his lover.

"I'll play your games with your sex with electric shocks," Corner assures.

"Black Sheep" and "M'aidez" explore more languid territory, but both manage to intersperse rolling choruses between the slower versus in order to keep the music moving.

With a similar flow but a dramatically different styling, "The Fuel" most recalls dark Depeche Mode of the early 1990s.

Musically, "The Fuel" incorporates more electronic variation than most of the other tunes, but it never reaches the crazed pinnacles of the album's other cuts -- instead, it riots and rages with an occasionally oppressive sense of overflow.

"Blue Movie" acts as the most apt representation of Depeche Mode imitation on Bloodsport.

Throughout the track, the quartet blends religious references with pop-culture imagery.

The Sneaker Pimps become increasingly sacrilegious as the song progresses, culminating in lines like, "I'm the boy on all the girls taking off their Bible belts."

Ultimately, the album's stunningly soft denouement strikes the perfect erie note to cap Bloodsport.

"Grazes" traverses an eclectic span -- seemingly gentle at the start, it dips into staggered electric wailings, playing randomly with instrumental and electronic at will.

Once again deteriorating into quietude, the tune laps, wavelike, at the last seconds of the Pimps' painful yet near-perfect sojourn.

The intensity and polish of Bloodsport define the nouveau Pimps sans Dayton. And the boys, backing lyrical prowess with manic electronic-rock, prove that change can definitely be a good thing.

The Arts & Entertainment Editor can be reached at artsdesk@unc.edu.