Invisible Girl
14th February 2010
1 Flesh Owned Joy
2 The Company of Sparrows
3 Under the Parish Lantern
4 Tom Brown's Schooldays
5 Trafalgar Ledges
6 Cage of Laughless Feathers
7 Wyndham's Marina
8 Supercigs
9 Old Men dressed as babies
10 Gracie-Doll Effect
11 My House
12 Epinephrine
13 The End of the World
14 Arndale Warden
15 There's nothing like a nice sitdown
The earliest of the Eddodi cycle and in context perhaps the most "experimental" of the suite of Moff Skellington albums. However that's context, and not to say that this is not as listenable in its own unique and refreshing way,as the others. There are perhaps more reference points, well clearer ones at any rate, to folk and blues idioms here, whereas the others evoke some of Moff's listening to other artists. None more so than "Under the Parish Lantern", with its wailing blues harmonica for example.
The opener "Flesh Owned Joy" is a rolling instrumental dominated by the squeeze box and chittering percussive sounds, and sets the scene somewhere in the smoke filled back room of the "Lemur and Hippopotamus" in the distant rural hillocks of Yorkshire. An alien swanee whistle sound gives it away as Moff territory as a mutant blues emerges.
The musical theme continues with the beautiful "Company of Sparrows". The tempo is taken up a pace with the insistent "Tom Brown's Schooldays" which focuses on people with "tallow legs", this morphs into pure psychedelia towards the end leaving this listener wanting more.
There is perhaps more of an introspective, or indeed contemplative, look at life here. I for one would love to meet the "vile pearly gobshite with the scrotum chin". Moff's strength here is his use of language to convey perhaps mundane matters to another place where more thought is given to the stuff of life.
"Cage of Lifeless Feathers" another instrumental, deals in repetition, and grunting/clattering noises, as a harmonica picks out a simple refrain, and evokes a feeling of apprehension tinged with hope - the last 60 seconds or so a unique convulsion of sounds and rhythms. "Wyndham's Marina" is a lurching march - one can imagine large farm yard animals slowly moving in time to this mesmeric rhythm. Chittering insect sounds dance with marimba like tones.
Matters get a tad surreal with the multi-layered voices of "Supercigs", dub echoes and distant whistles, and the reflective "Old Men dressed as babies" continues the Skellington schema of observation and commentary in a doleful tone. This is furthered with a maddening waltz called "Gracie-Doll Effort" which appears to continue the theme of older people. It is here that Moff most closely resembles the work of Don Van Vliet.
"My House" goes somewhere else completely with its distressed harp and guitar sounds, and multilayered and filtered voices. A simple rock rhythm kicks off the dark edges of "Epinephrine" as vocodered vocals take Moff up and down a couple of octaves suggesting what is to come on "Gravy on a plate of food", the rhythm is soon lost to a bubbling passage of disjointed percussive sounds as voices form a soup of aural pleasure.
The mad walking bass of "The End of the World" is a light relief after the proceeding - one cannot help but smile at the joyous levity of this arrangement. The skipping "Arndale Warden" seems to suffer from the vocals perhaps being mixed too low at the start - however it picks up towards the end and the odd couplet of "Daffodills Nil - Antibiotics Five" needs some careful listening.
Matters conclude with the wonderful "There's nothing like a nice sit-down" perhaps the most radio friendly of the pieces.
Of all the Moff albums this is the one that requires the most attention as there a great deal of detail within.
Highly recommended.
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