An off-kilter sunbeam has landed on the old record player – the one that still plays 16 Revolutions per minute. It’s by The Sexual Objects – the T. Rex’n'all Objects: the latest, hey – the greatest, glam anagram of influence and insouciance fronted by Davy Henderson.
Once the opening ‘Here Come The Rubber Cops’ sheds its slippery skin to distill down to an elongated denouement of skewed pop bliss, a modus operandi emerges: wiry, meshed guitars prod and nibble around the edges of something ecstatic and then, augmented by lush banks of vocals, deliver in sublime abundance.
Sometimes you may marvel at how individual songs manage to hang together, but Cucumber works gloriously as the smart sum of its teasingly tattered parts. Henderson, the man who also drove the Fire Engines and Win, slithers down the greasy pole of pop armed with nuggets such as the whatever-THAT-means ‘Bluetime In Fluff 82′ (“let’s disappear into the badly glued-down stratosphere”) and its erstwhile A-Side ‘Queen City Of The 4th Dimension’, a strangely elegiac shuffling Bolan boogie.
In similar deliciously derivative fashion, ‘Merrie England’ lays a louche Velvet Underground self-dialogue drawl over a chugging VU beat. These blatant assimilations and audio verités lend Cucumber a freewheeling spirit that’s sensual and liberating while still plugged into the pop grid.
How this amalgam of previously released 45s and fresh glam bambalam by an essentially regrouped Nectarine No. 9 translates into teetering yet affecting cohesion is a mystery and a delight. Scratchy odes to alienation such as ‘Outta Place Again’ and closing track ‘Demonstration’ radiate analogue warmth like the warm valves of a Dansette on a rainy afternoon, while the sonic sparkle of ‘Kodak Projector’ and the courtly acoustic ‘Baby Wants To Ride’ are an aural delight, even as the latter ends with the band discussing the shortcomings of the take they’ve just recorded.
Poppiest of the lot are the hooky, urgent ‘Full Penetration’ and the sexy freakbeat of ‘Midnight Boycow’ which is all delicious drums and handclaps and trippy keyboard, kicked into action by a filthy bass lick, and melodically spun from the same catchy fabric that powered Win wonders like the vastly underrated Truckee River.
Mostly, though, these are pop songs that tell the standard Verse-Chorus-Verse format to take a hike and not come back till it’s read a beat novel and pulled a warm blanket of analogue hum and crackle over itself in some timelessly rundown cold water flat. Cucumber is as New York hip as its cover suggests. The East River with a River Forth dimension. Demonstration over: flip back to side A, replay and be repaid. In spades.
Once the opening ‘Here Come The Rubber Cops’ sheds its slippery skin to distill down to an elongated denouement of skewed pop bliss, a modus operandi emerges: wiry, meshed guitars prod and nibble around the edges of something ecstatic and then, augmented by lush banks of vocals, deliver in sublime abundance.
Sometimes you may marvel at how individual songs manage to hang together, but Cucumber works gloriously as the smart sum of its teasingly tattered parts. Henderson, the man who also drove the Fire Engines and Win, slithers down the greasy pole of pop armed with nuggets such as the whatever-THAT-means ‘Bluetime In Fluff 82′ (“let’s disappear into the badly glued-down stratosphere”) and its erstwhile A-Side ‘Queen City Of The 4th Dimension’, a strangely elegiac shuffling Bolan boogie.
In similar deliciously derivative fashion, ‘Merrie England’ lays a louche Velvet Underground self-dialogue drawl over a chugging VU beat. These blatant assimilations and audio verités lend Cucumber a freewheeling spirit that’s sensual and liberating while still plugged into the pop grid.
How this amalgam of previously released 45s and fresh glam bambalam by an essentially regrouped Nectarine No. 9 translates into teetering yet affecting cohesion is a mystery and a delight. Scratchy odes to alienation such as ‘Outta Place Again’ and closing track ‘Demonstration’ radiate analogue warmth like the warm valves of a Dansette on a rainy afternoon, while the sonic sparkle of ‘Kodak Projector’ and the courtly acoustic ‘Baby Wants To Ride’ are an aural delight, even as the latter ends with the band discussing the shortcomings of the take they’ve just recorded.
Poppiest of the lot are the hooky, urgent ‘Full Penetration’ and the sexy freakbeat of ‘Midnight Boycow’ which is all delicious drums and handclaps and trippy keyboard, kicked into action by a filthy bass lick, and melodically spun from the same catchy fabric that powered Win wonders like the vastly underrated Truckee River.
Mostly, though, these are pop songs that tell the standard Verse-Chorus-Verse format to take a hike and not come back till it’s read a beat novel and pulled a warm blanket of analogue hum and crackle over itself in some timelessly rundown cold water flat. Cucumber is as New York hip as its cover suggests. The East River with a River Forth dimension. Demonstration over: flip back to side A, replay and be repaid. In spades.
isthismusic, October 2010
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