The Brian Jacket Letdown - 'Eat Your Friends' (Genepool) Released 05/03/07

“I close my lids but there’s no black just lines and shapes that drive me mad”. As gloomy as this may sound, ‘Eat Your Friends’ is a gorgeous Dali-dripping-chocolate of the gorgeously, sweetly surreal.  Kicking in with Tom Waits growls and insistent, goose-pimpling guitar lines, just when you think you know what’s going on, The Brian Jacket Letdown swerve their mystical magic-carpet adventure into a totally new and bizarre direction.  Eerie, almost menacing tempo tricks are placated by the dark, pouty cutesy-cutsey demeanour: one that’s half drawling ‘yeah peace out man, like that’s so totally dope’ and one which is tearing its hair out faster than Britney in rehab.

All this makes fairly little sense, but about as much sense as skinny-jeaned girls and boys covered in neon paint and Christmas tree decorations when they really, really should know better. This band, somehow make sense of the nonsensical. The b-side ‘Me and My Dog’ is equally as bizarre: it has a regimented, yet ethereal Talking Heads feel and stunning atmosphere, if not particularly profound lyrics.  As ever, TBJL steep their nonsensical ramblings in a triumphant gloss of pungent psychedelia and swirling, giddy guitar lines.  ‘Eat your Friends But Don’t pig out on them’: musings on Capitalism?  Existentialist anthropological theories?  Probably not, but anything delivered as weirdly and wonderfully deserves nothing but a nod and smile in agreement.