The Lovely Eggs – If You Were Fruit

The Lovely Eggs played a gig for me last year, and their ramshackle charm saw them as the night’s winners, most people agreeing this was the case. This album can only see them carry on gathering fans by the bucketload. The lead track of this, their debut album is Sexual Cowboy, a song that is harder than their previous stuff, a hard riffing blast with some yelled invitations at the end. I Like Birds But I Like Other Animals Too seems stroppier than previously, Holly’s vocals at turns cute and angry. Musically its riot grrl meets lo fi grunge. Mices employs a neat trick I’ve heard once before, where Holly and David sing across each other. Otherwise it’s a surreal nursery rhyme with some tantrum explosions of expression. Luna Café starts sweetly, and descends into interpreting the inside of Tom Waits head, while inhabiting his body. Where’s My Animal? is a surprisingly straight forward little ballad, but If You Were Fruit is an odd updated take on the If I Had A Hammer theme, done in disjointed, Steptoe & Son style ballad. Oh The Stars is a whimsical thing, based around a game I used to play when I was little, where you describe something and what its in, and so on, until you get to the universe. O Death hits on The Lovely Eggs formula again, alternating between sweet lo-fi rhymes to screaming banshee choruses, while Have You Ever Heard A Digital Accordion? riffs like Albini era Wedding Present, the strikes to emphasise the over rhyming chorus. Baulk Cushion is sweet and wheezy, it sounds like an asthmatic youngster trying to keep up with his friends in the forest. It’s fun, if not quite normal. Hey There Woodsman has all sorts of weird percussion including bicycle bells and horns, and wobbles along on a precarious ledge. America closes the album, claustrophobic and disturbing, a weird and wonderful end to an excellent album.

If You Were Fruit is out now on Cherryade
The Lovely Eggs myspace is here