XLover
Pleasure and Romance
International Deejay Gigolo Records
Release Date: Late-May, 2005

I'm getting annoyed with breathy female vocals. Less than a minute into Pleasure and Romance, the Gigolo debut from Xlover, I was struck by the similarity between singer Nina Rai on "Lovesucker" and Soffy O on "Missy Queen" and started to feel bored. By the second track, "Sex Rebel," I thought I was warming up to the album, but then realized that I was just listening to the New Order guitar and trying to ignore the vocals. On a track like "Faking It" (the subject matter should be obvious from the title) the indifference in Rai's voice makes sense. Overall, however, singing like a bored fourteen-year-old throughout a bunch of songs about sex is kind of creepy and definitely tedious. I wanted to hear more screaming, like Princess Superstar on the cover of "Darling Nikki" herein, or Rai on the hidden track, an electronic rendition of Nirvana's "Aneurysm." The latter is the highlight of the album, with Rai dumping the cute-girl routine for something far more gravely and sinister. Had the whole album sounded like that, it might have been an instant favorite of mine. Now, I'm just hoping that Gigolo will release a remix single of "Aneurysm."