the lovely eggs: have you ever heard the lovely eggs? EP

The Lovely Eggs are more than lovely; they are wonderful. The band, who consist of recently married Lancastrians David Blackwell and Holly Ross, formerly guitarist for now-defunct British all-girl band Angelica. The couple have had the pleasure of recording Radio One sessions for Huw Stevens, and their earlier hit ‘I Like Birds But I Like Other Animals Too’ received airplay from the likes of Rob Da Bank and Marc Riley, who invited them perform a live session on his show.

Pressed on yolk-yellow vinyl, this 7″ EP is a tea-party feast of imaginative, Technicolor ditties. Made from a motley choir of guitars, xylophones, bicycle bells, squeaky horns, recorders and “a floor tom with a wooden stick with lots of thick wool tied around the end that Holly hits the floor with”, this DIY, customised approach is the core of the Eggs’ magnificent, oddball charm.

‘Have You Ever Heard A Digital Accordion?’ is a catchy opener with a nursery rhyme feel, lyrically accumulating images both fantastic and mundane — beef bourguignon, fights with deadly scorpions, time travelling DeLorian adventures, and, of course, digital accordions. It flows along in a steady lo-fi punk manner, until the end when it morphs into a crashing haze of cymbals, distortion and brimstone wails. ‘I Collect Snails’ is equally weird and wonderful. Here, a happy cacophony of recorders, xylophones and tambourines blusters beneath lyrics listing an endlessly quirky catalogue of collectable treasures ranging from horses and radios to telephones, thoughts and comics.

The EP’s shortest song, ‘I Wanna Fall Off My Bike Today’ is a 45-second push-bikers’ anthem, with Ross’s Lancaster-edged drawl conjuring images of grazed knees and defiant glares. Next, ‘I Want To Be In Your Fire’ is a thrashy punk number complete with hearty riot grrl yells, rapid snare and cymbal action, and classic three-chord riffage. But it all ends rather sweetly with ‘Weird Heart’, a lullaby of a love song, half real half make believe, led with raindrop chimes in the style of Velvet Underground’s ‘Sunday Morning’ and what sounds very much like a ticking clock keeping tempo. Crowned with tender, fairytale lyrics like “In a barrel, in a barrel, we got married in a barrel / with a belly full of wine and cold London skyline / we sat in the dark / and I told you about my weird heart”, this is a rattling, music-box ballad for introverts in love.

Fitting snugly between kooky kitsch and borderline avant-garde, Have You Ever Heard The Lovely Eggs? is a noisy little slice of heaven, injected with comic book adventures, riot grrrl fire, punk-infected folk and a gentle, dancing psychedelia. My favourite EP of 2008, by miles.

[Cherryade; October 13, 2008]

‘I Like Birds But I Like Other Animals Too’

Written by: Charlotte Richardson Andrews

Tags: have you ever heard the lovely eggs EP, the lovely eggs

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 7:29 pm and is filed under albums & EPs, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.