Misty’s Big Adventure ��
Here we go, third album time. Forget the Youtube video. This is serious now. No more messing about, get your head down and grow up. On the other hand ... Enjoy!
Misty’s Big Adventure continues on its wispy and magical journey unabated and it is a complete and total triumph. The first track is truly joyful. The next is just as good and so is the third one. I could go on...
Every instrument sounds as a clean as a whistle. The vocals are silky smooth and the lyrics are awash with childish yet vitally important wisdom (The kind of stuff you learn on Pocoyo or He-Man but forget all so quickly). Delivered in a deliciously deadpan Noel Coward guise and backed with all manner of ooohs and aaahs you will fall under the spell of singer Grandmaster Gareth before you can say “smoking jacket”…
Admittedly, you could easily be listening to the Phoenix Nights’ house band Les Alanos, but give it a minute of your time you will more than pleasantly surprised. The cheese of the organ and comic melodrama of the arrangements mixes with silly, playful brass and jubilant strings. There is actual MELODY. These are the kind of songs that you would love to write but fear you would be laughed out by the big boys. It’s so simple and sweet it’s almost completely avant-garde. Usually such a lack of viciousness is a sign of weakness but far from it, here we have the musical equivalent of the guy who breaks up a scrap with the words ‘life’s too short’ and he’s damn right.
Having said that, a clarion Art Brut style call of “Fight, Fight, Fight!!” begins ‘Home Made War’ signalling the start of a less than bloody bout between The Divine Comedy and Belle and Sebastian. This could well describe the majority of songs here but it never seems samey or predictable for a second. The hook line phrase “I don’t wanna fight, so call me what you like” somehow has more punk credential than anything that poxy Gallows band have to say.
'Sitting On Your Doorstep' injects a bit of fuzz into the proceedings, before being replaced with the bright, upbeat keyboard riffs favoured by bands like Magazine. Its fantastic from start to finish.
If it all sounds a little throwaway then think again. The Cabaret 1930’s musical theatre of ‘How Did You Manage To Get Inside My Head?’ is heartbreaking in its own ridiculous way. The sentiment of the majority of the album is indeed one of pondering melancholy; it is just performed with an exquisite sunny delight. Lines like “People say its funny times but they can’t tell me why I am not laughing” or “Everything goes wrong and slides out of tune” being perfectly concise little commentaries of disappointment and loss.
Similarly, ‘Serious Thing’ is, well a bit more serious, and a fine piece of song writing if ever I heard one. “Something went wrong and now something is gone” is simple and effecting over music that would have critics salivating if it were written by the likes of Radiohead.
Returning to the frivolity for album closer ‘Long Conveyor Belt’, MBA cement themselves in my mind at least as masters of both lyric and tune, and long may their adventure continue.