Wevie Stonder - Wooden Horse of Troy

[mr.lizard]

(I actually wrote this as a press release for Wevie, but it doubles as a review...)

Wevie Stonder - "The Wooden Horse of Troy"

Resonating like a shrill comedy trumpet tooting merrily amidst a cacophony of bottom-end trombone-parps, Wevie Stonder are back to set the prat among the pidgeons of oddpop music with their third album on Skam Records. Bigger, badder and more idiotic than ever, this is the sound of men at the peak of their creative disabilities. Imagine George Clinton stuck in a lift with Jimmy Crankie, a walrus, and a baby’s-arm length line of PCP, and you go some way towards pinpointing the Wevie oeuvre. It’s music you may not be used to hearing, made by men you’d never wish to meet. Call it what you like: snertcore, joketronica; git-hop. It’s the Stonder sound. And it’s more original than a five-legged otter in a pith helmet.

So what’s inside the Wooden Horse?

As you’d expect from Hove’s cheesiest puffs, it’s a right old mixed bag of cockles and whelks, with the odd jellied eel thrown in for good measure. When tested in a marketing focus-group, "When the Last Thing You Want is the First Thing You Get" rendered several respondents stricken with the expression of a man sucking a lemon whilst clutching a horse’s scrotum tightly with both hands. Meanwhile, "Dog Gone" brings to mind a six-month old baby wearing make-up and high heels doing the can-can down King’s Lynn high street; and, with its munchkin minarets singing moronic refrains, eponymous track "The Wooden Horse of Troy" is the audio equivalent of having a jet of ice cold goat’s milk squirted onto your perineum. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll want to claw your own pancreas out with a rusty coathanger. But, by jingo, you’ll enjoy every godforsaken minute of it.

Because inside the Wooden Horse of Troy beats a real heart: pulsating and wheezing like a bald octogenarian mongoose. And while tracks like "Gagged and Bound" may make you dance like a hibernating earth worm emerging into sunlight, closing number "Autopilot "will have you weeping into your glass of Blue Nun with its haunting beauty. And that’s not all. Also inside the Horse are cheeses, soft and smelly. There are creatures, great and bald. And while the Horse can dance, it can also sing too. Of particular note for found sound enthusiasts and biologists alike, here you will find backing vocals from baby sea lions, monkey-solos, wildfowl interludes, and, naturally, dogs examining each other’s privates. There are also human voices – from larynx and from bottom – strewn hither and thither.

But, dear people, please do not fear The Horse. Even when it is rolling across your patio. Even when it is hiding under your bed. Even when it is staring in at your bedroom window as you play cribbage or sit whittling wood.

Instead, you would do well embrace the Horse. Ride it all the way into town, raising a bottle of whisky in one hand and a toy mandolin in the other. And what better way to soundtrack such a quixotic journey than with the twuntadelic sound of Wevie Stonder.

For more info on Wevie Stonder, call Bobby Ball at Skam Records on XXXXXXXXX, or text the word ‘ham’ to 999