Damaged Goods. The Hotrats. 2009. Fat Possum.

Almost midway into Damaged Goods, from Gang of Four’s debut record Entertainment!, Andy Gill’s serrated guitar goes silent, making room for this banner headline advertising romantic idealism, “Heated couplings in the sun,” quickly followed by the caveat emptor, “or is that untrue?” For their cover version of Damaged Goods, the Hotrats do something similar, but the breaks between verses and instrumentation aren’t as starkly drawn as they are on the original version. Comprised of Gaz Coombes and Danny Goffey of Supergrass, the Hotrats released the covers LP Turn Ons in 2010.  Made up of mostly quintessential British rock numbers, and three Americans, the Hotrats distills the pop essence of each chosen song, revealing, unsurprisingly, a commonality of craft—a shared musical language—that’s been in widespread play since at least the time of the British Invasion. The democratization of Damaged Goods makes hearing the song’s double meanings difficult because its multivalent perspectives are flattened out, reducing it to an uptempo breakup song with an onanist’s urgency. What’s missing from the Hotrats’ attenuated arrangement is Gang of Four’s dissection of the power dynamic built into personal relationships, and its eventual collapse beneath the weight of consumerism’s ongoing cycles of demand. There’s no individual power, Damaged Goods tells us, if you’re broke. The Hotrats canonizes Damaged Goods with an infusion of authoritative pop energy that overly simplifies the Gang of Four record by excising the spirit of the couplet’s final half, “Colder couplings in the night…never saw your body.” If Entertainment! was an act of both deconstruction and arson designed to destabilize the consumerist chimera, Turn Ons’ Damaged Goods seeks to memorialize our sentimental ties to the landmark record. It’s an impulse that goes against the Gang of Four aesthetic,  but apostasy may be the key rock and roll recommendation. 

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