MAN PLAYING KAZOO – Black & White & Grey (self-released)
Posted: January 20th, 2005, by Stuart FowkesSadly, not a descriptive title from a one-man kazoo outfit, but a maudlin four-piece rock outfit from Nottingham. ‘Friendly Guy’ has a stab at epic, sweeping chunks of rock, but doesn’t take it far enough beyond bog-standard quiet/loud territory to mark it out from a few thousand other bands, and the verses give a little too much emphasis to some gratingly pitying lyrical content. They’re much better when they keep things uptempo – there’s Matt Bellamy-esque intonation to James Housley’s delivery, thankfully without the wailing histrionics, and the pace is kept crisp and lively throughout. But I have to wade through thirty boxes of this sort of stuff just to get into my room, and the band really need to push themselves out on a limb and forge something individual from their strengths if they’re gonna make a name for themselves. Oh, and get a man playing a kazoo.
Stuart Fowkes
Stuart is possibly one of the tallest people you have ever seen. He towers above your puny skyscrapers like Rodan on steroids, his blonde spikes puncturing the atmosphe re like crazed, gelled knives. In real life he is part of the Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element pop outfit, and writes for other websites as well as this one - the cheeky blighter. He favours the noisier end of the musical spectrum, with a fervour which would seem to indicate a dodgy heavy metal past.
http://www.oxfordbands.com