Rebellious Jukebox: New Fast Automatic Daffodils

I got this album as part of a twofer tape that a friend did for me — the other side having Swervedriver on it. It was fucking great. There was this trip that we were on to the National Gallery in London and the whole trip had pretty much been dominated by these mind-numbingly boring female singer-songwriters in the mold of Beverly Craven that had half of us chipping the enamel off our teeth. The bus driver put out a call for a tape of absolutely anything because he was going to gouge his eyes out and that might make driving hard. I grabbed my tape from my cassette walkman and ran down the front of the bus and handed this over.

Shit, you\’ve never heard so many easy listening drugged zombies suddenly wake up from their stupor. They\’d been associated with the Madchester scene but it was more of a geographical thing than anything to do with their sound — they were an interesting fusion of several different veins that all seemed to gel together. They are criminally under-rated and largely unknown which is so damned stupid. One wonders if the name might have hobbled them but then as a fan it is one of the elements of their charm. So what do they have? Interesting quirky lyrics, punchy rhythms and a sense of constantly shifting around in chameleon skin that will never let you get bored with what they\’re doing. You really need to hunt this down; get over the fact that people may laugh at you when you say the name — wrapped up in that concept is a fucking unique vision that still bustles with energy, still seems as modern as it did then.

The name of the first album, pigeonhole, loaded with more irony than a Morrissey album is a pretty neat summation of their whole philosophy. The thing is, a lot of bands trying to escape pigeonholing do so with a signal lack of grace; nothing could be further from the truth with this band. This is the best album they put out; Body Exit Mind being a pretty good follow up but not as groundbreaking as this one.

—————-
Now playing: New Fast Automatic Daffodils – Working for Him
via FoxyTunes