Thursday, 16 February 2012






Such small coincidences have a profound effect on our lives, to the extent that you can quite easily define life as a massive stack of such coincidences. But, without them, you would never have found us here in our little corner of the internet and, by extension, have never found The Normals. Similarly, through a completely different set of cider and wellington boot-infused coincidences, we would have never had The Normals in the first place.

What is ‘normal’ anyway? Whoa, thats deep. Too deep for a music review at least!

Before we begin, it would be wise to note that The Normals, a five piece band hailing from deepest darkest Devon, are not normal. Trying to come up with a nice general statement that locks down where they sit on the musical spectrum is currently making my head hurt. I can’t call them a punk band – there’s too much general niceness for raw punk, and a bit too much brass. There’s very clear ska and reggae influences in their music, but I can’t really define them as a ska band either. I think the band themselves offer the best explanation on their Facebook profile. Genre: Other.

This is also kinda why I’m really enjoying their music at the moment, for the variety on show. Using their online profile as my guide, I picked three tracks to show off why you need to check these guys out.

1/ Leave Without A Sound. Its the instant combination of brass and tribal sounding toms that grab my attention here. Mixed in with an indie style guitar and walking bass, is a vocalist that reminds me quite a bit of Neil Hannon from The Divine Comedy. Structure wise, the Normal’s songwriting is solid and functional, with a key change that seems a bit on the nose, but works really. Overall, a great introduction to the band and their style, which I’m putting down as Northern Marching Band Reggae.

2/Suitcase Full of Shoes. The intro of baleful but soulful trumpets made me think that this was going to be some kind of New Orleans style jazz tribute. By now, I should have learnt, The Normals aren’t normal. Therefore we’re thrown headlong into a very ska infused verse about senorita’s in Costa Rica. Here we see more development of the vocal range, with a bit of a strain on the higher notes, but totally nailing it. So far, I think this track is more developed than the previous one, it feels much more connected and, unable to avoid the cliché, tighter. The trumpets are allowed more room to show off, which works really well.

3/ You and Me Again. This one. If any track shows just how much talent these guys have and how well the band is developing their sound and crafting their songs, it’s this one. Ok, so it’s not as madcap as Leave Without A Sound, but in its apparent simplicity we can see that it’s actually deeper than first thought. Well structured with a natural narrative thread, and also able to show off the best of every member of the band.

To summarise, The Normals have arrived, in style and a blitz of musical madness. And to quote Douglas Adams; normality has now been restored. Anything you still cannot deal with is therefore your own problem.

Review by Paul Barnes



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