Despite the strange band name, a list of animal-related song titles, and album artwork that might suggest that you are about to enter the realm of children’s entertainers, nothing could be further from the truth. Opener “Fish” greets you with a spiky, proto-punk groove and a frenzied, fractured new wave vocal, dispelling all such notions immediately.
The lyrics might be a bit crazy, but only in the way that the likes of Zappa or the good Captain himself, Beefheart that is (who is even referenced on that opening salvo,) wrote crazy songs. Okay, not crazy, experimental, avant-garde, adventurous…surreal. Surreal is good, right? Right!
“The Sex Life of a Slug” is explosive, heavy, and changable, sounding like music made on ketamine by a PIL tribute band, and I mean that in a good way…what other way could there be? “Shrimp” is fun and folkie, innocent and …insane (again, a positive). “Prison for a Frog” sounds like cosmic country music dropped one too many pills, and “Octopus” is surprisingly melodic, sounding like an English take on 13th Floor Elevators. And, in hindsight, we could do with more of that sort of thing.
“Mathematical Fly Art” rounds the album off and….oh, I give up! Sorry, but I may have met my match. Some of the sounds here are so odd and out there, so experimental and adventurous that my words are hardly able to do them justice. Just go and listen to the album…you’ll thank me later, or maybe you won’t. Either way, you will undoubtedly have heard music like little you have heard before, and that has got to make for a memorable day.
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