Strapping Fieldhands – Impossible To Say b/w Sitting On Her Whiskers (2013, Ritchie) @ 128 kbps
Two brand new songs from one of our favorite bands EVER. Regular readers of the aQ list no doubt remember back in 2010, when we made the Strapping Fieldhands’ Discus, our Record Of The Week. Go check it out, we gushed like crazy, cuz, well, that record rules, and even decades later few bands could come close to matching the twisted pop brilliance of Discus. And while the band made some killer records afterwards, we hadn’t heard a peep since the early 2000’s. But here we are, after a decade of near silence, treated to two new perfectly imperfect slabs of the Fieldhands’ warped popsmithery, and holy shit do these guys still sound as good as ever. The A side, “Impossible To Say”, is all warbly sixties style jangle, complete with woozy horns, all fuzzy and psychedelic, like classic Kinks but seriously tweaked and not a little bit druggy. The vocals that weird faux British accent that pretty much defined Discus, the song catchy and warped and fantastic! The flipside is also pretty Kinks-y but more of a ballad, but Fieldhands style, a heartfelt ditty about a bearded lady, who of course ends up “Sitting On Her Whiskers”. So great. Here’s hoping there’s a new full length on the horizon…