Lend me your face…!
Okay, how do I go about trying to describe a band like, Fight Like Apes? Well let’s see: take an arty Indie Irish band and add Electro Pop, some brash Punk Rock attitude and fuzzy guitars, and a foul-mouthed female singer in MayKay, and then spin them around, pull their cords and watch them go spinning and buzzing and spitting out strangely catchy disjointed Electro Punk songs…Confused? So was I, for about seven hours and fifteen days, since you took your love away, no, wait a minute, I think that might’ve been another crazy Irish woman…
Here we have the double A-side single of, ‘Lend Me Your Face’ and ‘Lightsabre Cocksucker Blues’, which showcases the band’s wonderful song titles if nothing else. Let’s not forget that the band have also come up with other great song titles like, ‘ How Am I Supposed To Kill You If You Have All Of The Guns’ and ‘David Carradine Is A Bounty Hunter Whose Robotic Arm Hates Your Crotch’, er, nurse, the screens please…So ‘Lend Me Your Face’ is a catchy little melodic pop number with synthesiser melodies with the twisted but strongly sung vocals, however, ‘Lightsabre Cocksucker Blues’ is something else (and a cover of Punk band Mclusky, I might add)…Think of Peaches after a cat-fight with Courtney Love singing a Punk-Spat Blues song with alternative fuzzy guitar riffs after each verse. The lyrics go, “Nicotine stained on account of her crotch // And I’m aching from fuckin’ too much // I know what I do, but all comes to you // Did you sell me to wanderlust? // I’m fearful, I’m fearful, I’m fearful of flying // And flying is fearful of me // I covered my eyes when she told me the news // Turning me on with my lightsabre cocksucking blues…” Good stuff.
The idea for Fight Like Apes, was to form a band (from the ashes of various crap bands) with the intention of scaring crowds with, “Poppy songs played so obnoxiously that everybody leaves”, however it doesn’t take a genius to realise that these guys are being quite cunning as they use this flippant comment to hide the fact that sometimes being kooky and weird can actually be fresh, new and entertaining, and thus create enough of a buzz to shift units and bring people to gigs. Think of early Marilyn Manson who musically was nothing more than experimental, and whilst it would be foolhardy to put these two in the same category, there is a raw disjointed sound here that is far from accidental, but cleverly crafted…This is brash, Punky, Indie, Elctro, Alternative but ultimately good stuff, and it’s worth checking out other songs on their MySpace page like, ‘Knucklehead’ that is a little like a Punk version of Aqua, with yo-yo vocals with sweet female vocals and deep brash male vocals…Indeed.