Saw the Cardiacs back in the ’80s when music TV as a worthy proposition. A university challenge spotlight highlighting bruised and bloody faces like a visual rewrite of “Bohemian Rhapsody” oozing with insane carnival colours. The kind of memories that stick with you in crooked smiles and water-squirting lapel flowers, the music as arresting as the spectacle glaring with zombie-esque madness replete with jerky arthritic motions.
It’s upbeat and eggy-eyed with plenty of rib-poking obliqueness. Jon Poole orchestrating Tim Smith‘s demo scribbles, throwing in plenty of hooks and jabbing momentums to the curious outlooks. Each track owning its personality, eking out a freshness that doesn’t sag for a moment, or droop into a uniformed sameness as it races away on those tempo grins. The lyrics all go faster blurs riding a carnivalesque Kinks bender, hula hooping through buttery rhythms with bright hands all over that roulette gamble of melody, as a child catcher nimbly gangles through the jiver of the words.
An absolute joy from start to finish.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
