Machine Gun Fellatio - Bring It On (2000)

From the opening track, "100 Fresh Disciples," in which lead singer Pinky Beecroft imagines himself the leader of a brainwashed sect over a hip-hop beat and guitar solo, Machine Gun Fellatio know that they're destined for cult success. Perhaps it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Bring It On! has the MOR-defying funky kinkiness of early Prince enjoying a ménage à trois with dance music and dirty rock & roll. Not-quite instrumentals like "Mojo Pumping," "Smooth Sexy Monkey," and "45" carry on the tradition of the doof-doof music that was only just going out of fashion at the time with simple vocal loops, sequenced drums, and bleep breaks. "Manywords" (later adapted into the theme song for Love Is a Four-Letter Word) is pure trip-hop reminiscent of Portishead when they sounded their most like a bedroom soundtrack. The band's obsession with sex peaks with "Horny Blonde Forty," which begins with Beecroft using his sultriest voice to read from imaginary personal ads where a "Horny blonde, 40, wants to do it all day/With a gun-toting, trigger-happy trannie named Kinky Renae," which was borrowed by the Whitlams for their hit single "No Aphrodisiac." Just like Ween, MGF had a gift for surprising you with an effective love song in the midst of their most oddball efforts. After an album of post-house-party alley sex, madness, weirdness, and drugs, they suddenly change tacks for "Unsent Letter." The song itself is a love letter never to be mailed, a straightforward bittersweet love song that sits comfortably among the best pop music Australian bands have ever produced. As Beecroft sang back at the beginning of the album, "I'm not afraid of romance," and he meant it. Underneath all the swearing and drug references that made songs like "Mutha Fukka on a Motorcycle" controversial alt-radio hits, there's genuine songcraft to MGF and it's on display in Bring It On! more than anywhere else in their brief discography.