Wiggy Giggy Giggy Wiggy Wiggy Giggy Giggy

Time to drop some 2018 flava on y’all, umm, word up your mothers and so on and so forth. 

Being the macho colossus I am, I was ironing and spinning tunes this afternoon, desperately needing something to bring some colour into this cold December afternoon of leaden skies.  Lovely Eggs This Is Eggland: colour me fizzy pink and orange striped, colour me bouncy, colour me happy.  Colour! Colour!! Colour!!!

Here’s what we’re dealing with: a husband and wife indie duo* from Lancaster, song titles including ‘Dickhead’, ‘Wiggy Giggy’ and ‘Would You Fuck!’, bonkers cover art and orange vinyl.  I was a lost cause as soon as a distant acquaintance at work mentioned it to me.  I wanted to take a trip to Eggland.

Let me state clearly for the record** that the Lovely Eggs are heavy as fuck, wonderfully, delightfully so for a duo – they lay all sorts of interesting sounds into the mix, but the basis of their sound seems to be a great big dirty, churning Hawkwind-style choogle-woogle.  Holly Ross plays up a storm on guitar and David Blackwell just smashes down the beat.  You want some evidence? check out the pulverizing ‘Witchcraft’ , where Holly sounds like a divinely pissed off demon.

Which is excellent and all but I like it better when they add a squirt of silly into the mix, step forwards ‘Wiggy Giggy’.  This is what 2018 has reduced us to and I’m happy about that.  A repeated chant of ‘Wiggy Giggy’ is cut up and looped, playing through the whole song , while sing-song vocals and a grunge lite guitar sit on top of it all.  It shouldn’t really work but it does, wonderfully – obeying no outside law of nature/taste/composition, other than its own internal logic to stand tall and proud as a fabulous off-kilter oddity.  More importantly, it makes me smile.

That This Is Eggland continues with a ranting belter of a tune like ‘Dickhead’ just brings some more July to my December.  My Geiger counter is registering the ghostly footprints of the Cramps around the fringes of this track.  Today’s favourite track ‘I Shouldn’t Have Said That’ just ROCKS it up a storm – all together now ‘I shouldn’t have said that / Right into your face’.  You even get bonus swooshy space noises on this one. 

Look, all of This Is Eggland is supremely listenable and fun but we need some honourable shout-out-wiggy-giggys for:-

• I’m With You:  Big kudos bonus pants for blending Stereolab, The Rezillos, and ‘Silver Machine’ and turning it into a delicious, audiolicious milkshake.
• Repeat It:  Some day-glo krautrocking, sir? you’re welcome.
• Big Sea: A more contemplative tone, juiced up by keyboards that sound like they were robbed from the Cars debut LP.

The closing glory is, of course, ‘Would You Fuck?’ where Holly lets rip in a decidedly earthy Lancastrian accent and the question hovers between somewhere between come on and put down.  Definitely one to playlist next time the vicar pops around for afternoon tea. 

The Lovely Eggs make clever, churning, fizzy-wizzy, wiggy giggy giggly, heavy music in a real sugar rush psychedelic stylee.  With bonus swearing.  I love the way this LP neatly straddles whimsical and visceral.  The world needs far more of this in it and I for one have applied to emigrate to Eggland permanently.   

899 Down. 

*I have such a weakness for husband and wife combos – Moon Duo, Nashville Pussy, Liminanas, Simon & Garfunkle the list goes on and on. 

**see the clever pun I did there? record record, you see? clever.