God Is My Co-pilot, Get Busy (Atavistic)

Posted December 31st, 1998 by admin

God Is My Co-pilot
Get Busy
Atavistic
By: Eric G.

God Is My Co-Pilot has been churning out a semi-improvisational no wave racket for the better part of the decade. Led by Sharon Topper and Craig Flanagin, God Is My Co-Pilot is an ongoing experiment in music, sexual identification, and cultural dilettantism. Sometimes its gay agenda breathes too hard down your neck, but for the most part the band keeps itself in check with healthy doses of humor and naïveté.

Keeping up with this band is a task unto itself, although its output has slowed down considerably over the past few years. There was a time about five years ago when you could bank on either a new God Is My Co-Pilot album, seven inch, or EP almost monthly. The past few years have given the band’s fans a chance to catch up, and what a body of work it is in retrospect. The band has grown beyond its years despite the relatively unchanged guitar/bass/drums/horn skronk.

Get Busy is a somewhat lateral step in the band’s post-punk, post-funk, jazzcore evolution. Sharon Topper’s child-like grunts and snarls have always blended well with Flanagin’s disjointed guitar squawks, but she makes a concerted effort to sing on most of the songs here. The subject matter covers familiar territory from menstruation to casual sex to choose your own adventure. If you’re a fan of the formula, you won’t be disappointed, though there is little here that God Is My Co-Pilot hasn’t already done with more energy and fervor.

Tags: review