Lead single 'Fun' sets the tone magnificently. Over a stonking sweaty groove our nihilistic heroine mocks her own tendency to always put pleasure before business. 'Dating A Model' marries a gorgeous melody with a savagely funny pen-portrait of an idealised partner, served with a side of weapons-grade sass and supporting cast of jealous lovers and cocaine communists. "Vulgar as leopard print / cheap as confetti"' is just one stand-out line among dozens on 'Forever Money', a wistful slow-burner referencing everything from Sinatra to cheap corner-shop wine and Only Fools And Horses. "I had also wanted to shoehorn Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses' immortal line 'This time next year, we'll be millionaires' into a song for a while, so that made it into the chorus," explains Emily. "I was thinking about FairyTale of New York, with those characters who have that sort of tragic delusional hope that I find so romantic and relatable."
As ever, Emily Breeze is at her brilliant best balancing the prosaic life of a party girl with high-minded allusions to the great cosmic dance. "The ideal listening situation for Rats in Paradise could be when you have just bet and lost your house and car and kids on a horse and you are lighting up a Hamlet Cigar thinking ahhhhhh fuck it, never mind.”
A world in which deadbeats, dreamers and beautiful losers are dancing through the night to a soundtrack of prom night synth pop, obnoxious rock and gothic disco. Whip-smart, vituperative pop from the 'poet laureate of glamorous wastrels'
TRACK LISTING
1. Romance Is Dead
2. Fun
3. Dating A Model
4. Forever Money
5. Yesterday's Parties
6. 1997
7. Anatomy
8. The Beatniks
9. We Were Lovers Redux
10. Graceland