That very British institution the Official Monster Raving Loony Party has fielded many a candidate and, love them or loathe them, no election would be vaguely democratic without them.
Following in the tradition of the party’s links to music (via it’s founder, Screaming Lord Sutch), the local OMRL candidate Nigel Knapp has a new album out with Michael McDonough Jones in their guise as The Big Fibbers. Many a local over the years has been graced with their itching powdered ‘n’ beer fruited take on the folk-pop song – blithe lyrical anarchy, accompanied by some ruggedly acoustic guitar, occasional keys and the inevitable peewit of a swanee whistle.
Captured here on CD, there’s something quaint and old wordly about both subject and the beery fug-like delivery of a 1970’s Saturday evening in a univercity town’s black-beamed snug – you can almost hear the football rattles and rah-rah rag week collection boxes segueing into the gentle clack of ale jars and muffled chortles as Nigel spins woefully humerous tales of spaced-out, outer-space girlfriends and lamp-post pinball. When not trying to be so entertainingly comic, a gem such as ‘Fruit Cake & Gin’ emerges from the mirth and seems to lend surrealist stand-up confidence to the last few songs on the album – ‘Dead Man Blues’, ‘Armadillos’ and ‘Howling Were Wolf Blues’.
At 12 tracks long, with 3 bonus live tracks, it’s definitely worth going ray-guns at dawn with the competition: if you like your music with humour, served up as unpretentiosly as baked beans on toast – in the tradition of the Goons or Bonzos with John Otway stirred in, a few anti-folk lumps an’ all – this is for you.”