You know you're onto something special when you receive a CD with artwork depicting 'the Pineapple Goddess, Halakahiki Liika, and her human-headed dog helpers, the Tingiale' and the music contained within turns out to be even better.
Such is the bizarre, but entirely brilliant world of FLIPRON: a west-country based quartet signed to the discerning Tiny Dog label who recorded this (I think) debut album in a Glastonbury Studio. The end results suggest the area finally has something musical other than the world famous festival to be proud of and the ensuing 39 minutes cram in everything from Ska to majestic balladry and plangent pop to Eastern European waltz tempos. Somehow, the whole joyously colourful melange makes the most glorious (non)sense imaginable.
"Fancy Blues & Rustique Novelties" harbours a grimly amusing fascination with death and even kicks off with the grittily memorable Spencer Davis-style r'n'b of "Raindrops Keep Falling On The Dead" where Joe Atkinson's magnificently overheating organ ushers us in and presence-fuelled frontman/ songwriter Jesse Budd ruminates: "It's a foolish enterprise to tell a man when & where his death lies, so if you find out on your ouija board don't spoil the surprise" by way of an introduction. Chilly. And superb.
From there on, it's never once less than gripping. If the idea of Nick Cave and The Coral scoring a Bratislavan funeral doesn't initially grab you, then it will when you try "Rusty Casino's Casino Rustique" on for size. It's a slice of atmospheric weirdness which also makes the best use of the phrase "Piss off" since New Order's "Your Silent Face". If anything, though, the following "Big Baboon" is even better. It's Edgar Allen Poe's "Murders Of The Rue Morgue" instilled with B-movie organ, Tindersticks-style vibes and a fine guitar solo from Budd which appears to use an authentic late 60s fuzzbox. Cracking.
Elsewhere, Budd's offbeat subjects take in being chased by an angry mob of pensioners ("Hungamunga"), a dream-like tribute to his late Grandad in the plangent, shadow-of-mortality tale "Hangin' Round The Lean-To With Grandad" and the creepy tale of loss that is "Whispering Ghost", where they even make a ukelele and whistling sound cool.
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Trying to pinpoint the album's Eureka moment is tough as the quality remains high throughout, but the two epics "Curtains" and "The Vicious Car & A Love Poem" are surely contenders. The former is a bitter ballad ("with her new book of rules for my trust/ I'll break them the moment I've read them") featuring delicious piano from Joe Atkinson, a drifting harmonica solo and just a soupcon of Elvis Costello, while "The Vicious Car..." was written with Bacharach & David in mind and is a scrumptiously mordant slice of dark melancholia revelling in the power of lines like: "Funeral fugues played on the radio inside/ It was hung like a hearse, it was a dead smooth ride". Fabulous.
Flipron are surely musical connoisseurs, and even their instrumentals hoard a curious strength in depth. There are two here and even these brief snatches are excellent. "Skeletons On Holiday" is the first and it's a homage to Dutch Hawaiian guitarist Wout Steenhuis. Even better it sounds like The Specials' "International Jet Set" with Dick Dale guesting. "A Trip To Jaywick Sands", meanwhile, is an odd tribute to a surreal holiday village near Clacton and features a Contessa Beat Box bought from The Damned's legendary drummer Rat Scabies. Come on: I couldn't bloody well make that up, could I?
Flipron are truly quite a find. "Fancy Blues & Rustique Novelties" is a multi-layered, fantastically unpredictable and often morbidly hilarious ride which all discerning music fans need to hear. Let's hope this is merely the sound of them gunning that jet-black hearse and easing it onto the highway for a lengthy death trip.
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