I also like coincidences.  I can’t remember where I heard about Nottingham’s Fists for the first time, but I find myself nudged into actually posting about them by the fact that it turns out they are off on tour with Sparrow and the Workshop in early October.  Frustratingly but unsurprisingly there’s no Edinburgh date in there, so if you want to catch either you’ll have to take the Train of Joy to Glasgow and back.

Fists are, to be blunt about it, just another indie band I suppose, but they’re good and I like them.  They touch on some of the cute off-kilter psycho-kindergarten pop of bands like The Lovely Eggs, but never stray too far in that direction.  There’s also a touch of the punch of early Hot Club de Paris or the Futureheads, but then the aggressive wail of the kind of stuff CBGBs famous also makes its presence felt.

They can be melodic when they choose, but these little oases of calm don’t surface all that often in their songs, leaving the listener a little like a beaten spouse who ends up accepting whatever tenderness they can manage from their spouse.

So it may be a familiar recipe in some senses, but I like the blend they’ve achieved, and it reminds me to a degree of Ace Bushy Striptease, who were absolutely ace at Truck this year.  So yes, another reason to go and see Sparrow and the Workshop this Autumn.

Fists – Ace is the Way (from the Olympic Hits EP)

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Fists – Skit (b-side to Cockatoo)

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Well I will confess that my first thought when listening to Ace Bushy Striptease was that I hoped the name didn’t imply some novelty band.

It didn’t, which was nice, but that worry was obliterated on first listen and replaced with a resounding ‘what the fuck is this?’

It reminds me of the first time I heard the Wave Pictures.  Not that there’s any musical similarity, more that despite clearly being able to hear the bits which showed that they actually did know what they were doing, there were still plenty of places where I found myself wondering if this was perhaps the first time the band had actually picked up their instruments.

It’s like an odd mix of the Wedding Present and the Lovely Eggs, by parts classic indie, and by parts the hyperactive theme tune to a children’s television programme gone horribly wrong.  Perhaps like that proverbial hurricane blowing through a junkyard and spontaneously assembling a 747, although we happen to have stumbled in on it halfway through the job. In amongst all the randomly swirling mess there are brief shadows of what is being built, but an awful lot is still left to the imagination.

It’s also a very, very brief album.  Sort of like a firework.  The songs pretty much all explode and burn out in and around the minute and a half mark, except for the mental eight minute final epic, which squiggles its way manically through to the end sounding like a cassette being fast-forwarded without lifting the playback head from the tape.

By the time I’ve finished this record I invariably seem to shake my head, wonder what the fuck these guys are taking, and then go back to the start and play it all again.  It’s all over the shop, but it’s fucking brilliant too.

Ace Bushy Striptease – HM9 (Waterfall)

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Ace Bushy Striptease – Let Us Sit Quietly and Listen to Pop Punk

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This wasn’t particularly supposed to be all fuzzy and noisy, and in actual fact is probably isn’t, except for in bits. I have been listening to the Male Bonding album a lot this week, and then the split single from Thee Ludds and The No-Brainers dropped into my inbox, and then I became fascinated by the splendid mess that is I’llfinishyrfinish and suddenly I realised I had a podcast which was pretty much all over the place.

So I decided to embrace it, go for it and just appreciate the noise. There is some acoustic fuzz too, and a song by Grandaddy who can be fuzzy but often aren’t, but in general if you like your music to be played on a tape recorder down the back of the sofa in the next room, you should like this.

Oh, and we have the new Walkmen track and the new Cotton Jones one and all sorts. Aren’t we clever. Actually, who the fuck am I calling ‘we’, anyway?

Toadcast #132 – The Fuzzcast

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01. The Walkmen – Stranded (02.20)
02. Grandaddy – Fuck the Valley Fudge (09.02)
03. Male Bonding – Your Contact (16.19)
04. Navigator – Headless Horseman (The Microphones cover) (19.44)
05. Grizzly Prospector – Oh! Grizzly Me (Slow) (Live) (21.06)
06. Cotton Jones – Glorylight and Christie (24.09)
07. The Sound of the Ladies – The 40s Never Died (27.35)
08. Thee Ludds – I’m a Moron (34.42)
09. The Walkmen – Thinking of a Dream I Had (42.06)
10. Ace Bushy Striptease – I’llfinishyrfinish (I’ll Finish You) (49.32)