Promiscuity

There is something deliberately unfinished about this recording — the rhythm section locks in tight but the guitar and voice sit on top of it slightly askew, creating friction rather than smoothing it out. The song operates in the territory of desire rendered comic by its own excess, the word "promiscuity" repeated with the same tone one might use for a diagnosis or a toast depending on which verse you're in. Chao's vocal delivery here is more sardonic than elsewhere in his catalog, the irony not cruel but pointed, aware of the absurdity it's describing. The production layers Anglo rock structures over Caribbean percussion with a casualness that itself seems thematically appropriate — genres mixing without commitment, a sonic promiscuity to match the lyric subject. What saves it from being merely cheeky is the musicianship underneath, the bass particularly, which plays with a seriousness the rest of the arrangement refuses. The song doesn't moralize and doesn't celebrate — it simply observes, which in 1998 was already a somewhat unusual position to take. This is late-night music, for driving back from somewhere you probably shouldn't have stayed so long, the city lights making everything look more consequential than it was.