Your Children Placate You From Premature Graves (Music Emissions)

Artist: The Legendary Pink Dots

Album: Your Children Placate You From Premature Graves

Label: ROIR

Year of Release: 2006

ME Rating: 4 out of 5

Reviewed by: Mike Wood

Date Reviewed: 2006-10-08

For over 25 years now, the Dots have been consistently delivering on their own personal brand of electronic punk. This new release shows them in superior form, and features some of their best work of the last decade. Yet The Silverman, Ka-Spel, and the rest add to their legend with Your Children, easily their best in a decade, or at least since 2002’s release. As usual, they deliver disturbing lyrical probes into the psyche, and back up their wisdom with music that often borders on the psychedelic, the violent, the ambient, but always strays from each at odd moments, keeping the ear guessing. Songs like “No Matter What You Do” and “Please Don’t Get Me Wrong” straddle the line between mercy and revenge, while “The Made Man’s Manifesto” and “Your Number is Up” work by taking a more defiant lyrical stand. Legendary Pink Dots have never been afraid of exploring any dark recess of the mind or of sound. To their credit they have also never lost the curiosity that has kept them making vital music all the way through to the present. For those listening, the reward is true art, that makes you think, sway, and question just how solid an allegiance you ought to have with your own inner delusions.