Unfetter Cheese?

Nutshaft's editor was hit by a surprise change in submission dates by its printers this month, so I had to change my schedule and write this review in a few stolen moments.  To be honest, it came out alright, although it might be a bit purple...and I got the LP name wrong in the original.  Still, the editor should have corrected it, isn't that his job, or something?  Here's the Dec Ocelot plug thing, whilst we're at it.

I went to a gig the other day.  It was promoted by It’s All About The Music (although as this was not their first event I’ve been to where the promoter didn’t even enter the building, I wonder whether there isn’t an ulterior motive).  I saw some great music from Oxford, Swindon and California via Berlin, but I was driven to write about Charms Against The Evil Eye, Oxford’s whirlpool of prog, pop and Pitt Rivers signage.

Once upon a time Matt Sewell had a band called The New Moon, and they made some very pleasant lightly psychedelic folk-pop tunes, about cosmology, bifurcating felines and a very strange, acid-fried photographer.  The songs were good, in a crepuscular Robyn Hitchcock vein, but the band never quite did them justice, decent though their efforts were.  It was the addition of a new name and a supple, almost jazz-inflected rhythm section that lifted the band and made them one of Oxford’s secret gig pleasures, often to be found in the dusty corner of some odd line-up somewhere in the shire, playing to a select coterie of appreciators.  Not that they can’t ramp up the noise and the three chord garage fuzz if they end up higher on the bill...even if someone not a million pages from this column thought they resembled The Black Hats’ dads at this point.

If you like your songwriters intellectual, melodic, laconic and looking a bit like Vic Reeves, then I suggest crossing your fingers, carving an oaken talisman, donning a Mesopotamian pendant and heading out for some Charms Against The Evil Eye.

FREE CHOW – ASLEEP WITH MY HAND IN YOUR MOUTH (Own label download)

Sometimes, you just know the title came first.  Take Robert’s Web, the atrocious 2st century Carrott’s Commercial Breakdown in which comedian Robert Webb introduced ‘net clips with a dead-eyed resignation.  Or, consider Jesus In Furs, Free Chow’s Christmas song: surely the name came first, and the concept of throwing nativity lyrics at The Velvets’ finest bondage anthem later.  Either way, it’s great fun, a Benylin-wooze of varispeed tape vocals and cheap guitars which, considering the LP also on offer, is not too sacrilegious.

For, Asleep With My Hand In Your Mouth is a brutal stream of tacky noise and schoolboy taboo bashing, somewhere between The Butthole Surfers and V/Vm, sliming its way from the ersatz sex waltz of “This Is My Scrotum” to the Stylophone country of “Freight  Train”, presets goosestepping over common decency with every bar.  Childish nonsense, in many ways, but high quality childish nonsense: we love the Chicory Tip bass keys on “Don’t Touch Kids”, the Rocky Horror meets Jigsaw weirdness of the opener, and the fact that jukebox, pukebox rock ‘n’ roller “PB Party” manages to make jokes about both Hamlet and putting peanut butter up your arse.  When our tabloid media increasingly indulges in ethical paradoxes, denouncing pornography whilst celebrating unceasing titillation, demonising supposed deviants whilst shoving airbrushed teenage midriffs where the actual news used to go, perhaps the only option is to blow a big raspberry, stick two fingers in the air and make an ugly pop song about pederasty.  We like this record.  We may not always enjoy it, but we like it.