Smile Like You Mean It
So my friends it’s a new band for me today, Wigan’s finest Boss Keloid and by crikey it’s got more twists and turns than Spaghetti Junction, a convoluted, mind bending journey into a world that can only exist in the minds of the most eccentric and obscure, including mine.
This is ‘Family The Smiling Thrush’ and it is full of mystery and magic, the song titles are enough to send you gleefully wassailing into next year. There is an olde- worlde charm about the record, despite it being a terrific chunk of doom/ prog rock, giving you an almighty thump across your unsuspecting noggin. The cast of this intriguing and beguiling beast are Paul Swarbrick – guitar, Alex Hurst – vocals/guitar, Ste Arands- drums and Liam Pendlebury- Green on bass whose combined talents see us under starters orders with the nine minute spectacular ‘Orang Of Noyn’ a brooding monster under the bed type animal that stalks, pounces and then kills, you could say the entire record is like that and good job it is; we need a damn good kick in the shins after devouring ten times our body weight during lockdown.
This is their fifth album so I have a lot of catching up to do, suffice to say this reminds me of the incredible, musical wizardry of King Gizzard, experimental, wandering over fields and mountains, you think you know where you are going but an unnatural head spin exorcist style leaves you grappling with another element.
A deliciously haunting mix of prog rock and metal, atmospheric with doom and sludge sprinkles. Songs like ‘Hats The Mandrill’, ‘Gentle Clovis’ and ‘Grendle’ show us the band have a knowledge that exceeds most others, and they present their findings in this psychedelic, big beat sonic puzzle; an exhibition of creativity, vitality and mindfulness, all culminating here, at the home of Boss Keloid.
If you got the hippy hippy shakes then strum your way into oblivion with your family, your boss and the smiling thrush.
Azra Pathan
Boss Keloid – Family The Smiling Thrush out now via Ripple Music.