Can Eight Legs add anything more to the indie rock genre?
Music from the Noughties may have been tainted by the generic spawns of Simon Cowell’s talent shows, but by the looks of things, this decade is going to encourage originality, almost to the extent of wackiness. With the world obsessed with oddballs like Lady Gaga, it seems you have to shock to impress. Just from the oddly-titled ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Cuckoo Nest’, you know this is going to be an intriguing album. Furthered by the cover photograph showing each member of Eight Legs dressed in bizarre costumes (tiger, duck, pink elephant, dragon) in a London street, you completely abandon any preconceptions.
Thankfully, the album is not as peculiar as one might expect. Underneath the attention-grabbing exterior is a contrasting work with a surprising degree of musical sanity and coherence. As the album begins with ‘I Understand’ fears begin to arise as to whether Eight Legs are going to be another band that use the same three chords over and over again. It may have been a recipe for success for bands like The Ramones, but not every band can pull it off. Fortunately, these doubts quickly subside, with Eight Legs’ simplicity admittedly working in their favour.
‘The Dystopian Not So Future’ cannot exactly be hailed as a lyrical masterpiece, with most of the chorus once again comprising of the non-lexical vocables, but has a strangely lovable melancholy nature that may induce a sing-a-along. ‘Best of Me’ is a wonderfully upbeat song, displaying a quality that is evocative of the Kaiser Chiefs. Their youthful boisterousness is given the chance to shine during this song, with the chorus energetically propelled by drummer Jack Garside’s off-beat open hi-hats.
As the album progresses, the band pleasingly adopt some musical variety, with songs like ‘Cloak and Dagger’ exhibiting their versatility and proving that they should definitely not be written off as ‘just another indie band’. Whilst songs like ‘Wish It Was the 60s’ fail to match the standards set by previous numbers on the album, the quartet have still produced a good album overall.
There is nothing hugely original about Eight Legs’ music, but they do what they do very well. Alarm bells sometimes begin to ring when a band releases a work on their own label; often the case because their music is uncommercial and has failed to gain the support of a recognised label. Luckily, this does not seem to be the case with Eight Legs; there is certainly the market for this type of indie-rock and by distributing their album via their own label, Bootleg Records, they’ve thankfully managed to retain a sense of identity without having to conform to too many overused indie standards. For any fans of Razorlight, Franz Ferdinand and the aforementioned Kaiser Chiefs, make sure you check out this London-based band.