However, one did get their name from the other: I'll let your own research skills figure out which informed which. So, there's six members in Plastic Little with seven aliases and they hail from Philadelphia (I don't know whether the playground is where they spent most of their days) and Welcome to the Jang House is their third album.

Strange then that their intro is an ode to NYC, delivered with what soon becomes a familiar tongue-in-cheek brilliance. The traditional acappella contains gems such as "Brooklyn, if you were a girl I would eat you out, and for five days I wouldn't wash my mouth". This isn't music for the easily offended and it isn't the last time that comparisons with Gym Class Heroes can be drawn (think As Cruel As School Children's Sloppy Love Jingles).

The electro-funk that follows is a complete surprise, Boyz sounds like something that would emerge from an American version of The Mighty Boosh (minus the crimping) which is a fairly surreal experience. I only say 'fairly' because of what follows - a sexually loaded rap / 2 step track based around a sample from Michael Jackson's Thriller. But the first real insight into who or what Plastic Little is comes in I'm not a Thug.

In a jovial way the track puts Plastic Little into a middle-class, slightly rebellious context: a group that talks the talk but doesn't necessarily walk the walk. This doesn't even matter when the music's so infectiously uplifting. At the same time, it's can also be horrifically bleak, such as Hola Plastique which asks "why date her if I can rape her?". They clearly know that a line exists, it's just more fun for them to stomp all over it.

As Welcome to the Jang House continues, it becomes more and more mind-bendingly surreal, if you can imagine Ugly Duckling on acid with a greedy helping of 'shrooms, then you're close to being able to comprehend Driz Hollering which even name-checks Jurassic Five.

Rap O'clock takes the surrealism to a near zenith before it peaks with Sugar. If the Thriller sample was a strange enough thought, imagine The Archies' bubblegum pop Sugar, Sugar being doubled in speed and having a clearly unbalanced rapper drawl over it. It's the stuff small children's nightmares are made of.

Catch these guys on tour this October if you can, because if their album is anything to go by they will jam your socks off. If there's an album that can make you laugh and move as much as Welcome To The Jang House (that doesn't have Jack Black anywhere near it) then please direct me to it.

- Azeem Ahmad

share:  Facebook | Digg | del.icio.us | more

Mercury Prize 2009 nominees