It’s wilfully perverse, and delights in tempo and tonal changes without a second thought.
It’s wilfully perverse, and delights in tempo and tonal changes without a second thought.
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Lordy what to make of this? This is an unnerving record, and not one to be easily dismissed, despite its bold attempt to frustrate the listener at every turn. And the zombie guy on the right of the cover looks exactly like Lord of Spin Alistair Campbell, ho hum…
And, initially, there’s worse to come. Rather than introduce the listener gently into the world of Super Adventure Club, the band stick possibly the most obtuse, cussed and perverse song on the LP right at the front; namely Hip Hop Hot Pot Pot Noodle. The title gives a very important clue to the music, that it’s not easily digestible. I mean, it’s only three minutes long but by the end you feel as if you’ve digested all of Mahler’s canon… But no matter, after a few listens the charm of the songs – mainly by virtue of some incredibly eloquent lyrics – wins you over, and once you get the fact that the observations drive the music and not the other way around, you’re fine. As an aside, the lyrics on this LP have got to be among the most erudite I have encountered on a record in the past 10 years or so. The lyrics for Nosferatu are laugh out loud funny:
“That’s a fake nose I can see it from here/there’s a piece of Sellotape stickin’ out behind your ear/that’s a fake nose I can see it from here/ and those plastic fangs make you look like Alan Carr”
Sonically, this lot are in thrall to the alien art-noise vibe of Soft Boy’s Can of Bees LP, or Bogshed, or Stump or, for that matter, the car-crash hippy funk of Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica. It’s wilfully perverse, and delights in tempo and tonal changes without a second thought. A marvellous example of this is My Other Brain: a veritable welding (and I use that word very, very carefully) of a languorous Soft Boys stroll and a headlong rush into a take on Orange Juice’s Simply Thrilled Honey. It’s mental, overly wordy and silly, but utterly endearing.
So, you have been warned, but give this record a go.