(t5!) Heroes Of The Zeroes Singles: #09: The Rapture - House Of Jealous Lovers (2002)

Genres are ridiculous, aren’t they? Once upon a time they served a purpose, when they were just “rock” and “pop” and “hip-hop” and “jazz” and “country” and “electronica”. It made it easy for consumers to find cd’s in music stores. But so many artists have ventured on pushing these genre boundaries. So many artists have abstained from being labeled that it’s getting harder to describe them. Ironically, all of this compelled music nerds to create more labels to easily pigeonhole them and hence, the birth of sub-genres like folk-rock, jazz-house, and punk-pop, and a bunch of alt-something’s and post-anything’s and experimental everything’s.

And disco-punk. My favorite sub-genre creation of this decade—at least, as far as I know it was created this decade. It was the record label DFA that spearheaded the disco-punk movement, introducing punk bands that knew how to get down. But so many of these bands were just that—punk bands like Liars and Radio 4 who played their music with a danceable approach. There was LCD Soundsystem who was more focused on the disco half of the sub-genre. And there was !!! which was actually a funk band by definition. Only one band truly represented the disco-punk scene, a band that resided in the exact middle of the line that connected disco and punk. And they specifically have one single that if people that have a BA in Pop Culture discuss disco-punk in 50 years, they’ll spend two or three lectures dissecting this song. That band is The Rapture. And that quintessential disco-punk song is “House Of Jealous Lovers”.

The most substantial thing about this disco-punk trend is that it gave people who aren’t usually aroused by dance music a tune to dance to. I don’t know what it is about “real” dance music that indie fucks can’t shake it to, but this they go ape shit over. Maybe because it has guitars, or because it references Public Image Ltd., Gang of Four, and other obscure sources, or because it bucks the current trend Pitchfork and other music blogs are going ga-ga over; but dancing to “Jealous Lovers” gives them cred. It’s absurd, I know, but thanks to this song, there are more kids who dance today and I’m all for a song that encourages more dancing in this world

The genre itself isn’t enough to push “House Of Jealous Lovers” in the top ten of (t5!)’s Heroes of the Zeroes singles list. Of course, the song is tremendous. It’s electrifying. It rarely works that four bandmates play their instruments like they were leads, but it is triumphant here. Vocalist Luke Jenner screams the title like it’s a home team chant at a sporting event. The guitars sound like ice picks bayoneting a block of ice. The bass strings sound like they’re made out of rubber. Drummer Vito Roccoforte sounds like he downed a few gallons of Red Bulls before the recording.

And the cowbell. That motherfucking cowbell. Pardon me if I can’t contain myself from typing out the third swear of the entry but I’m just so fucking hyped-up after listening to this song. It used to be a joke prop in an SNL sketch, but after this disco-punk movement, it’s now a legitimate instrument. The success of “House of Jealous Lovers”, as well as the successes of LCD Soundsystem’s “Yeah” and !!! “Me And The Giuliani Down By The Schoolyard” is more attributed to their use of the cowbell than any other instrument in the respective bands. It’s equally as important as the bassline in Chic’s “Good Times” or all the noise in My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless. Here, the cowbell is tenacious, like torrential downpour hitting rooftops.

It’s disappointing that disco-punk genre wasn’t as persevering as the cowbells in “House of Jealous Lovers”. Even The Rapture’s career went downhill after this release, following it with “Whoo! Alright-Yeah…Uh Huh” from their second album; a very underrated song yet never as imposing as “Jealous Lovers” at its best day. I hate to use a cliché ending, but to be fair, a miniscule number of tracks in the history of sound can say that they’re as imposing as this.