Zoey Van Goey pick up where their excellent debut album, The Cage Was Unlocked All Along, left off. The second outing of cute-pop frolics sees the band continue their adventures with theatrics and genre-hopping finesse. As if to throw you off the scent, the band kick-starts proceedings with the sombre tones of ‘Mountain on Fire’, a dense track that unravels with repeat plays, driven along by intuitive drums and percussion and the delicate vocals of Kim Moore, who has one of those voices that makes other girls jealous and all the boys doe-eyed.
Soon the hop is back in their step and it’s easy to see why ‘The Cake and Eating It’ is the first single. A delightful mix of spiky guitars and Moogy-goodness stuffed full of melody and charm with the boy/girl vocals working a treat. Zoey Van Goey really excel when they turn it up a notch in this way, they repeat the trick on the instantly likeable, ‘You Told The Drunks I Knew Karate’ and the anthemic alt-rock of ‘Robot Tyrannosaur’, which harks back to the new wave sound of XTC in their prime.
For the most part though, the band seem content to occupy a leisurely pace with great dollops of whimsy throughout, it works to great effect on the cabaret-styling of ‘My Aviator’ and Parisian beat-pop of pen-ultimate number ‘Another Day Another Disaster’. It doesn’t work so much on ‘Sackville Sun’, although far from being a poor song, it’s drenched in too much knowing bijou and as such proves too saccharine for these salty ears.
So the order of the day is sweet and humorous and Propeller Versus Wings displays a musical versatility that should see Zoey Van Goey continue their upward trajectory and sonic-treacle for hopefully a long time to come.
- Monoganon - 28 October 2013
- Randan Discotheque - 1 February 2013
- The Voluntary Butler Scheme - 4 August 2011