Celebrity Chimp
It’s been a while since I posted about MySpace heroes – that movie business was keeping me really rather busy. Anyhow, bar a couple of jammy Londoners it’s unlikely any of you will have heard of Celebrity Chimp, but you may well have heard of Nightjar. I absolutely loved Nightjar’s mini album The Moth Trap, and it got a pretty good reception on Song, by Toad so I thought you might be interested to know what’s happening in that neck of the musical woods at the moment.
Well Andy, one half of the Nightjar songwriting pair, has repaired to London where’s he’s recruited my old pal Tom to batter his pots and pans and together they have formed Celebrity Chimp, a sort of blugrass-punk outfit with a taste for a touch of smartarsery. Of the four songs only Kasia sounds as if it has been written without tongue slightly in cheek, and being a wooing song written for a slightly terrifying bar wench even that one has elements of the more than slightly quirky approach to lyric-writing.
Musically it’s genuinely top stuff. The punk comes out in the rhythm and this fair batters along in that fingertip desk-drums sort of a way you know I love. Kasia would probably be my favourite, and Pornstar and Mrs. Barry are both pacy and chaotic with the surreality of the subject matter delivered so quickly by the music itself that’s it’s only afterwards you find yourself wondering if they were being serious or not. But that, I reckon they’d tell me, would be over-thinking.
Celebrity Chimp – Kasia
Celebrity Chimp – Pornstar
Do you like Langhorne Slim, Toad? These Celebrity Chimp songs remind me of him, though Langhorne’s got more intense vocals to match the music’s pacing more closely. I like this, though!
Don’t know him at all China, but MySpace should sort that out in a moment or so. Assuming he’s bothered with MySpace!
Langhorne is fecking delicious, Toad. Try & get your hands on his first L.P., which (in my humblest) I feel better than his subsequent as it feels more true to his roots. Fucking stonking live, too. Got to shake his mad hand after a Cardiff solo support slot for The Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players a good few years back. Genuine article, him.
[...] The irascible Mr Toad has two offerings from a great new London duo called Celebrity Chimp. It’s sort of like punk crossed with bluegrass. If that makes sense. [Song, By Toad] [...]
Andy wants to violate me in dirty loos.
That puts you on a very long list, sweetheart.