Member:
Chuck AzEee!
(Profile)
(All Album Reviews by Chuck AzEee!)
Date:
2/9/2005
Format:
CD (Album)
The imaginative British band, The Cardiacs, had their origin dating back to the late 70's. The Cardiacs off-kiltered punk/new wave style hid a very complex prog underlining, which probably scared off many of the musical press.
Fronted by leader Tim Smith and his brother, bassist Jim Smith, the compilation release The Seaside is a set of recordings done by the band from 1980 to 1983, which amazingly did not find success despite the band's similarities to Split Enz and to a lesser extent Dexy's Midnight Runner's (mainly because of Tim and Kevin Rowland's high pitched Cockney-ish snarl).
From the opening track "Fibber and Twitch", one could tell there is something different about this group. Musically speaking, very few punk-influenced band, ever differed to complex progressive rock bands as reference point, let alone being able to play in that context, but even in during this stage in their career, The Cardiacs were able to pull it off with astonishing ease.
The shades of early Zappa, Gentle Giant, Van Der Graaf Generator and Genesis creep up innocently on a listener, as one would be expecting a two minute thrash away, then the band would go into a extremely complex musical break, that would have you either in a amazement or scratching your head.
Songs like the strange "Hello Mr. Sparrow", the carousel-ish "It's a Lovely Day", and Madness-like tracks "A Wooden Fish On Wheels" and "Hope Day" along with early concert favorites "Gena Lollabridgida", "R.E.S" and "To Go Off And Things" are all amongst a rather interesting collection of songs added to The Seaside with stunning results.
The Cardiacs's The Seaside would be second of three compilations (Archives Cardiacs 1977-79, Rough Bootleg plus the live album Cardiacs Live before they would release their first official album, A Little Man and A House in 1988.
A rather peculiar band to recommended, as The Cardiacs might be too odd for progressive rock fans and too quirkingly complex for 80's new wave fans, but for those seeking challenging, but entertaining, at times even danceable music look no further than The Cardiacs's The Seaside.
Charles
For fans of early Split Enz, XTC, early Fishbone and early Talking Heads, but yet none of these were as complex as The Cardiacs during this particular stages of their careers.
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