Just a year after A Little Man, the Cardiacs put this one out, another ambitious and complex album – these guys were impressively prolific. This one seems to have the highest reputation of any Cardiacs album ftr, although in terms of stylistic development this is very similar to the previous album. Perhaps it’s more about ~refinement~ than innovation.
If anything the songs on this album are even a bit more manic and spastic sounding, with faster tempos, it’s like they doubled down on their weirdness. But at the same time there aren’t too many surprises. Tim Smith continues to yammer out indecipherable lyric after lyric over musical phrases that are unpredictable and complex. The Zappa-worship continues just as strongly as before (just listen to that instrumental part at the end of “Baby Heart Dirt” – pure Zappa) and the album even ends with another Genesis-esque symphonic finale, just like the previous album did.
The most notable difference in production is that the sound seems to be limited here to just the 6 band members (guitar/bass/drums/saxophone/keyboard/percussion) without the additional instrumental help like strings etc that they had last time. So the sound is a little less dense but it’s still got a lot going on.
If there’s one thing I’m not super in love with it’s Tim Smith’s vocals, like it’s not a deal breaker but you gotta admit the guy’s voice is kind of abrasive and ~wacky~ sounding which is probably not for everyone lol. Anyway there’s not much I can say about this that I didn’t already say about A Little Man. It’s good
Does Bang want to listen to this? Ok
The Davis Collective 