The facts: an 8 track mini-album on 12” clear vinyl from former members of Khaya/Desc and Sainty Jude’s Infirmary. Even Thomas Truax is helping out – so far so good.However, despite the pop elements to that CV, anything driven by Dan Mutch is never straightforward. So when the EP opens with visceral bile with musical box accompaniment, the nerve-shredding Albini-esque guitar and industrial percussion come as a bit of light relief.
“Jesus fucking Jesus, there’s nothing you can say that I’ve not said to myself” Mutch relates on ‘Butterflys’. Other points of note: the band, are, it seems, obsessed with carrier bags.
‘Forest of Dean’ itself is a mechanical haunted fairground ride and is the best here, a frantic rattle through a Khaya style tune, the closest we get to that band’s skewed pop legacy. ‘Do a Little Twirl’ is a furious start, the melodica subsumed by everything else including some fierce fiddle, frantic drumming, and of course Dan Mutch’s demented vocal. Folk music it’s not. Folk devils they are.
