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Steve has always loved his echo pedal, but this time, I'm sorry to say, he's just taken it too far. At first it's fairly subtle – just the little ricochet on the first few lines of "Blou Ballon"...but by the end, he has an entire choir (of rugby supporters?) repeating "Blou Ballon" after him. Each track offers hope of subtlety, only to collapse at the chorus into a performance so pseudo-passionate it's camp, with, on tracks such as "Juliet", a chorus of scampering violins adding their Xylitol. As the verses kick in, so do the drums, presumably to help the rooi-perm-topped aanhangers figure out when to clap their hands and swaai from side to side.
"FM Stereo" is some sort of marching tune with great, fake, in-studio-recorded crowds echoing every word of the chorus. Steve uses drums the way old apartheid army korporaals used their command – without great subtlety. And realising his political standpoint to be what it is, I can't help finding the style of it all kinda...perfect for an AWB braai.
"Napoleon" remains a well-written song, worthy of Meatloaf's early drama, and all about the romantic frailty of the male moral compass (more popularly known as a penis). Steve's version is so overblown it conjures up images of pink feather boas. If you want to hear how this song should sound, listen to Idol runner-up-turned-skouspeler, Andriette's version.
He's thrown in a couple of colabs, like the operatic intro to the religious "I'm Not Alone", and a duet with Patrizio Buanne which comes across real classy. Like calling strip club johns "gentlemen" is real classy. He covers the classic "The Air that I Breathe" - accompanied by a synthesiser that appears to be exploring its inner Casiotone. k.d. lang's version is so much less gay.
Of course, Steve is not a stupid guy – he's just a horrible person. So you can bet he's making music this awful because music this awful sells. Those rare moments of good taste, like on the Celtic verses of the ballad "DKW" prove that he's capable of more. But mostly, the music is so deeply disposable, so empty you’re left wondering if all those "echoes" are studio effects, after all.
In the cover photo, Steve stands, arms folded, looking down on you like you're some insect he's just about to squash. Ok, okay, perhaps I'm reading too much into it. And perhaps it’s not fair to judge the cover by the music, or the music's meaning by Steve's recent cynical eulogy to Eugene Terreblanche. But it's hard not to.
