The Kettle black’s album is pretty crappy looking and this almost made me not even bother to listen to it. In fact I would have not bothered with it at all if I hadn’t been told it was this weird experimental punk type stuff. So I thought I had better give it a try, and I’m glad I didn’t pass it up because it lead to a fairly endearing listening experience. As yes, exactly what it is a sort of super lo-fi post punk kind of thing.
Just very sort of simplistic and a bit weird. Apparently the chap behind this dreams of being a t-shirt salesman and he wants to use the band to go on the road and sell his wares. I sure as shit hope this is a bullshit story because if not he has made an epic failure, the music being good while the logos etc, being pretty visually uninteresting.
It would seem this is a one man band , which is pretty impressive as it really sounds like a full band. And for one person to pull that off they get my respect anyway. What I like about this is though that it sounds lo-fi and cheap, without trying to sound like that. It sounds like the effort is put more into the music than the idea of the music, which I find cool.. Well I should explain I mean the image of the music, don’t get me wrong I like well thought out interesting ideas in music, what I don’t like is when bands are more concerned with their cool status over their musical ability and songs. And these songs and music I really enjoy.
There is this weird almost maritime music quality to it at times, that sort of Celtic rhythm to it, and at others distinct moments of a sort of outsider fringe country music, particularly that weird early 70s stuff where they were doing all sort of weirdo things to it.
Lots of sparse low level/low-key recordings where the vocals sort of bursts out onto the forefront. And the track “Superman” features a very nice violin piece in it. But yes mostly I like the thrown together hodgepodge nature of the whole thing. Like it really works in its’ low end DIY sense. Like it just sounds really really out there, and underground. Maybe that is all just contrived, maybe it is accidental, but the sound quality really works to the advantage of the music. Making it sound especially distinct and uniquely bizarre.
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