Julian Cope - You Gotta Problem With Me

Julian Cope’s new album YOU GOTTA PROBLEM WITH ME (no question mark) is another protest album in the tradition of his previous releases PEGGY SUICIDE, JEHOVAHKILL, AUTOGEDDON, CITIZEN CAIN’D and DARK ORGASM.  Unlike most records by Cope’s head-in-the-sand punk rock contemporaries  (almost all of whom he believes to be shirking their primary rock’n’roll responsibility as cultural mouthpieces), YOU GOTTA PROBLEM WITH ME deals primarily with such currently controversial, nay taboo issues, as religion (our own and other peoples’), and the West’s latest wave of xenophobia and self-doubts brought on by a combination of the war in Iraq, the so-called 9/11 bombings and the EEC’s latest huge wave of migrants from former Communist countries. YOU GOTTA PROBLEM WITH ME also addresses all of Cope’s other long-term gripes: corporate greed and the destruction of Mother Earth, misogyny and homophobia, and our  apparent inability to address such essential matters due to cultural  ignorance and the glaring faults in our education system. Yes, Lenny  Bruce and Bill Hicks are dead, but Cope’s still pissed off enough to  fly the flag for all three! However, while the songs of YOU GOTTA  PROBLEM WITH ME are even more lyrically hard-hitting than those on DARK  ORGASM, musically this new record ploughs a far more traditional Copean  furrow, returning the listener to insidiously melodic post-punk songs  in the JEHOVAHKILL style, many sparsely orchestrated with Mellotron,  wah-wah guitars, orchestral percussion and even lush harmonies. Released on double-CD and 12" vinyl gatefold sleeve LP, the 13 songs are split into two sections, and are accompanied by a 16-page booklet of insights, hard-hitting information, and a very epic poem: all designed to shake us from our post-everything stasis.

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