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Both the concept album and musicals are fodder for write-offs and ridicule, but developments this year have returned some credibility to these forums of expression. Once seen as an indulgence of prog rockers and something only tourists and old people could ever really love, respectively, 2011 has seen PJ Harvey turn the concept album into something very deep with Let England Shake, while South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have revived the musical and made it into something for everyone (excepting the easily offended) to love with The Book of Mormon.
Now, the Indelicates—the UK’s great unsung indie-pop subverters—have taken on both the concept album and the musical with their third album, to be released next week. In true Indelicates fashion, the concept they’ve chose is a heady one; they have made a concept album/musical on David Koresh, he of the 1993 Waco Siege, and have entitled it David Koresh Superstar. And if preview track, “Something’s Goin’ Down in Waco” is anything to go by, it’s going to be a mind-blower. While disembodied voices and unusual subject matter set to a beguiling cabaret rhythm may not be the ingredients for the perfect chart-topper, the Indelicates could just win over a few idiosyncratic hearts with their singular—and pretty catchy—vision.
