One More Grain - 'Having A Ball'

Some stuff sinks in at once. With others, you have to play it again and again to get your head around the baffling proceedings. ‘Having a Ball’ belongs to the latter category. Thankfully, the delay is caused by the sheer genius of what hotly-tipped Londoners One More Grain are up to. Imagine a woozy Specials delivering a sloppy drunk yet miraculously tight lofi ska update of a Can number with added pop chops, even more prominent horns and John Cooper Clarke questing on conversational vocals, and you’ve probably pictured about one quarter of ‘Having a Ball’s’ oddball brilliance. The locked-in groove of the Fall-worshipping B-side ‘Jon Hasselhoff’ is just as good, the upbeat party mode of its more outgoing flipside replaced by a claustrophobic clatter. “The things that go on you can scarcely believe,” they intone at one point, offering a handy summary of this cracking single.

Released 14/01/08 on White Heat.