Smells Like Children
I can't help but thinking that this album must have confused the hell out of anyone buying it for their cover of Eurhythmics' "Sweet Dreams". You see, this was really meant as an experimental stop-gap release between Portrait Of An American Family and their next album. However, due to growing controversy and the aforementioned cover getting mainstream rock radio play, it ended up going platinum, outselling the album it was meant as a companion piece to.
The album combines remixes and reinterpretations of Portrait songs, covers, and short sound collage snippets. The three covers are pretty successful; Aside from "Sweet Dreams", "I Put A Spell On You" has a fraction of the menace of Screamin' Jay Hawkins but works, and Patti Smith's "Rock N Roll Nigger" is actually a pretty inspired cover choice.
The best of the remixes is easily "Diary Of A Dope Fiend", a much slower, more dramatic reading of "Dope Hat" that suggests the kind of thing they'd be reaching for on Antichrist Superstar. The remaining remixes and sound collage bits don't really stand out in and of themselves, but it seems they're just meant to contribute to the album's bad drug trip atmosphere, which they do. And in concept anyway, it is pretty funny to get their tour bus driver to do a country version of "Cake And Sodomy" given that song's subject matter.
As far as the sound collage snippets go, the most interesting ones are "Sympathy For The Parents" and "Dancing With The One-Legged...", which excerpt the band's appearance on the Phil Donahue show
- since a stated theme of Portrait was the hypocrisy of Moral Guardians, it's interesting to hear them actually being confronted by moral guardians themselves. As a whole it may not work as an album, but it does work as a mood piece and as kind of a snapshot of the controversy surrounding the band at the time.
Key Tracks: Diary Of A Dope Fiend, Sweet Dreams, Rock N' Roll Nigger
