The Wayback Machine

Hail time-trippers! Another Monday, another victim.....erm, Guest! Yes, another willing participant wishing to travel not only backwards thru' time but across an ocean, too!

We're proud and honored to sail the wormhole with Daniel Radclyffe of The Brian Jacket Letdown!



The band are busily attempting to put the kaleidoscopic blinders on us-yet again, as they create another album of the good stuff! Of their newest track, ‘Eat your Friends’, Mark over at Losingtoday, had this to say of it:

"The Brian Jacket Letdown ‘Eat your Friends’ (Genepool). Irresistible oddball pop which for once really has had us struck numb wondering exactly how to describe it. Best then start at the start. The Brian Jacket Let Down (top name agreed - what exactly it means - who knows - and frankly who cares) are a 6 piece collective based in London housing members from places as far and wide as Brazil and Poland as well as featuring the South live keyboard player (well obviously he’s alive - live as in gigs). They have one full length already stuffed up their collective jerseys entitled ‘Hooves’ which much to our annoyance has disappointingly passed below our usually acute radar. They are described by their label as ‘peddlers of melodic farmyard rock with kitchen melodies’ which if you didn’t know better might instil a few Jethro Tull meets the Wurzels reservations. In recent memory they have shared stages with Misty‘s Big Adventure (featured elsewhere about these pages) and - well - oh bugger it‘s feckin great okay. ’Eat your friends’ is all at once disturbingly catchy and eerie at the same time, locked within a mindset preferring to loiter on the unpredictable margins of psyche pops more lysergic and esoteric pastures TBJLD persistently re-arrange the goal posts as they swerve, shimmer and contort their way into your headspace. Think the late great Vivian Stanshall having hoodwinked Frank Zappa’s multi lingual pop manual - frying in batter cute morsels of warped sugary Elephant 6 collective odd pop with an irrefutable after taste of the late Syd Barrett’s chemical imagery as found on ‘Arnold Layne’ and decoding the recipe into a three minute wonky mini opera fleshed out with a half pissed rumbling country riff loosely modelled on Elvis’ ‘Way Down’ that fetchingly appears to go nowhere and yet simultaneously goes everywhere. Barking stuff. Flip over for the decidedly crooked ’Me and My Dog’ which features the rarely heard use of barking (second mention of that word in the same review - could this be the start of a catchphrase - who knows) on a record which personally for me is only slightly outdone by tracks that have the gratuitous use of a harmonica and some well tuned whistling. This honey appears to achieve the previously thought inconceivable marinating both prog rock and a freaky funk lick which to these ears sounds like it was lifted from Paul McCartney and Wings big box of toons in one handy to hear space albeit interspersed with a spot of Floyd’s ’Shine on you crazy diamond’ for dramatic scene setting effect. Totally wired and without doubt stupidly essential although we still don’t know why exactly. Single of the missive." www.genepoolrecords.com

My personal favorite from their 2006 debut ep, Hooves, is "A Light Array." Another meteor-shower watchers' headphone reverie! Available via Genepool.

So, where might such a man desire to go?

You've been given a one-time opportunity to use The Wayback Machine; what band would you like to see, in what year, and what song would you most want to see them play?

Daniel: Novos Baianos, 1974, "Isabel (Bebel)", from their self-titled album of the same year. A cover of a song written by Joao Gilberto about his daughter (who would grow up to be a famous singer herself.)

( Editor: Hmm. Yes, well. Leave it to Daniel to stump YouTube! We hope the following suffices and aids in the desired temporal shift.)



Thank you, Daniel! Best wishes on the new album! Please keep us all informed, ok?