The Rascals - 'Suspicious Wit'
Weird. There was me, begging for the Coral to go back to the sky-cracking madness of their first album, if they were going to persist in the painstaking re-enactment of '60s beat-group nonsense. And now here's the Rascals, also from Liverpool, also on Deltasonic records, also keen on the sounds of that magical era...and bringing along their own bag of dark freakery, which is the only justification for 'going '60s' in the first place. Are they reading my mind?
I mean you wouldn't put it past a band who is capable of a song as witchy and demonic as this to be gifted with psychic abilities. And clearly if they are, some two-headed goat lord is going to force them to use their skills for an evil purpose or scary ritual. There's none of that "with great power comes great responsibility" stuff in this ramshackle voodoo mass. No, this is all about the great power, the great scary weirdness, and the great fun.
And make no mistake, this IS great fun. It sounds like the sort of song Hard-Fi might write if they spent as much time sat around a ouija board as they do walking The Streets with The Kids, attempting to raise that land army of Suburban Knights they keep going on about. Only one of Hard-Fi has been spirited away by wizards, and replaced with a many-tentacled drumming beast which is part octopus, part orangatan and part woodpecker.
And another one of Hard-Fi has been blasted to bits by a rogue incantation, and resurrected as an owl-faced bat-fiend, with long probing fingers, which he uses to torture and humiliate a church organ. Look, someone's drawn a willy on the side of it. THAT'S HOW BAD THINGS ARE GETTING.
Oh, and another one of Hard-Fi was sucked into a murky bog, and can now only be heard in the lower sub-bass register, as his screams for help come to the surface as wet, slappy, flatulence.
And then there's the poor last one out of Hard-Fi, whose melodic gifts have been magically whisked off (in the verses at least) by stoat-fingered minions, who have also tied him - half-naked - to a sacrificial altar, and who now has to watch, horrified, as the good-hearted street poetry of his music is tormented and bedevilled by swooping guitar beasties and shrieking banshees.
So, not that much like the sort of song Hard-Fi would write after all, really. Still, I did say it was fun, didn't it?
Muah-ha-ha-ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-HA-HA-HAAA!
*cough*
Download: Out now
CD Released: February 18th
(Fraser McAlpine)
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