Cowboy Flying Saucer – Travel Lodge

Sparrow Hawk

Cowboy Flying Saucer‘s second album dispenses a series of lead hollerer BK13‘s slightly surreal and repetitive vignettes over an at times contorted and at times spacious scrum of musical hubbub. His appearance at a Travel Lodge wedding that transformed into some kind of hallucinatory extended dream-state is brought to life in a way that I wasn’t expecting.

Each of the tracks seems to revolve around a poetic mantra that BK13 sets up and the rest of the band colour in or set fire to, depending on what is required. Somehow, he manages to distil the essence of each episode into a few lines that he delivers in various ways from Mark E Smith-like sing-talk to an hysterical burst. Meanwhile, the rest of the band set up soundscapes that veer from the post-punk to squelchy, sleepy post-techno. All the protagonists here abuse synths, and it is those that add disquieting, random or just plain crazy textures to the rumbling tracks.

Drummer Dave B was originally in Magoo, whose first album I recall with much fondness. His ability to lay down a precise and insistent beat is the key to the tracks, with Spanna‘s subterranean bass lending a dramatic slant. Guest saxophone on opener “Heavily Sedated NOW!” adds a queasiness that augments Johnny Ven‘s sharp and stabbing guitar line. The voice pops up here and there throughout the song, surveying the surroundings like a mysterious creature, judging where best to appear next; and then when it does re-appear, it seems to have donned a fake moustache and glasses to try and trick the listener into thinking it is somebody else. Meanwhile the rest of the band just work round it.

There are great atmospheres produced throughout the album. “No Cover At All” has a spy theme feel to it, the guitars mysterious and darkened. BK13’s lyrics “I’m falling for your daughter” , delivered in various as if auditioning for a part in a surreal drama, would not convince the father in question and just to labour the point, the drum fills go off like machine guns and the guitar queases all over like a seasick mother. A megaphone alarm is part of the rhythm for “Mushrooms And Leather” and I have no idea what this is about. The band has a kind of Metal Box inventiveness about their arrangements that doesn’t imitate, but they manage to find room in each track for surprises and treats for the listener that they probably weren’t expecting.

You might call Cowboy Flying Saucer’s sound post-punk, but there is so much more than that. There is a Happy Mondays lilt to “Crack Grandma” and the observations about her physical state at the age of forty-six are hilarious, if a little close to the bone. You can picture in your mind’s eye the image BK13 is trying to evoke as the music crashes around you. There is a touch of lazy, squelchy techno to “Travelodge Wedding” and the insistence of the description of the aunt with the ankle bracelet gnaws into your consciousness, adding to the sense of dislocation that the band manage to convey.

The whole thing is a wonderful melange of the unexpected; clipped funk guitar and Elvis impressions on “Space Town Lovers”, where the delicious line “reptilian rapscallions” vies with some wild synth emissions for pride of place, while the tired and emotional closer “I Want More” captures the band dizzily whirling around an empty dance-floor at five in the morning. “She jacked your body” insists BK13 as the band indulge in an effort to swamp the proceedings with a hypnotic soup of sound.

I fell asleep at one point whilst listening to Travel Lodge, and had a dream about scruffy pink lapwings sitting on a bridge in a car park. This album is full of those kind of unlikely images that the band pull together with unexpected twists and turns, yet remain solidly together the entire time. It is oddly addictive and thoroughly recommended.

-Mr Olivetti-