Not such a surprise that he used to make comics with Kid "Eddie Fresh" Acne. He's got bleak power. Like Frankie Boyle on a particularly misanthropic philosophical riff about death. Zebra Man, the comic was called, I believe.
I've another weak link for you. Pastoral guitar bits of this remind me of Shane Meadows movies, especially his shots of trees blowing in the wind or grass drifting. Maybe it's an East Midlands thing. Like the airport.
"Torn Asunder In The Sky" is a majesterial, bandy-legged wander down the High Street with Renaissance backdrops wheeling past and talk of "county cricket" and "taxidermy on the stairs". A morose King Arthur of a man, he is, ruler of every Tuesday afternoon he surveys.
His court is in circular session and I hear a lot of pounded pavement in the background: a hedge pop star, an itinerant fuck. "This Is My Holiday" is a day-in-the-life of shedding ideas about himself, grubby tissue after grubby tissue falling from tired coat pockets. Cut-ups, home recordings, mutterings and random sampled dialogue and noises like a massive hornet: this is what a brain gets up to left in a messy house in the middle of the night or the middle of the afternoon, whenever it can be left to itself.
It's a mystical business. "I Got Midlands Visions" is genuinely spooky. Direct from the Summerisle Shopping Centre with eerie sliding recorders and menacing bubbling keys. "I Was Thankful to Hens" has the lurching, acoustic blues sound of early Beck. I've heard albums less like "Stereopathetic Soul Manure". I keep missing the lyrics to "Announced Their Arrival in Bird Calls", but his face is definitely turned up to the welkyn. And birds are one of my favourite source of metaphors, so full marks there.
You can order this new digital version of what was released on vinyl only in 2007 from here: http://invisiblespiesrecords.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/fuck-everyone-i-am-king/. I huskily suggest that you do. You can pay what you want for it. FLACs and all that.
Rating: Greensleeves out of Grubby Kitchen
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