Fight Like Apes - Tie Me Up With Jackets
This three track single goes some way towards capturing the band’s frenetic energy, as displayed live at last year’s Dot to Dot festival in Nottingham, where their set was one of the highlights.
Lead track ‘Tie Me Up With Jackets’ captures all the electro-kiddie exuberance of a romance conducted by “playing lovely noise that makes me love you”, hanging out in your bedroom, taking regular “smoke breaks”. Namedropping Simple Kid and Yo La Tengo along the way, this builds in volume and sheer shoutiness and is enjoyably bonkers.
Of the remaining two, ‘Telephone The Real Ham Jackson’ is worth a visit for its darker edge (“Did you know / She’s a racist?”) interspersed with “la da da da doh” lilting, and the protracted electrosquall at the end that lasts as long as the sung part of the track. Lastly ‘Canhead’ mashes quirky-twee-bits (“Goodness me, it’s fish and chips!”) with shouty-noisy bits in a confusing melee.
Fight Like Apes: bleepy, shouty, occasionally foul-mouthed and quite possibly certifiable. Not dull.