Durrr

I did something I haven’t done for quite a while the other day and bought a record solely on the strength of it’s cover art. The record shoppers equivalent of Russian Roulette, the last time I did this I singularly failed to dodge the bullet and sprayed my brains out with some old pile of unmentionable techno-ish crap that went on for a billion years without doing anything, despite having an ace dadaist collage on the front . Grrr.

BUT!

Joy of joys, this time round I was met with nowt but a CLICK! as I lowered the needle onto “Toast And Marmalade For Tea / Chemical” by a bunch of Oaklahoman space cadets calling themselves (rather superbly) Stardeath & White Dwarfs.

The cover art features a crudely drawn naked woman with impossible fingers and big jubblies stabbing the shit out of an equally scribbled green monster dude whilst shooting a rainbow from her fingers. Further graphic exploits of this pencilled siren adorn the back of the 7″, in glorious back-of-an-exercise-book felt pen style. It looks a bit like it could be a frame from Alan Moore’s ‘Promethea’ comics, which is a good thing.

So what of the music? – “Toast and Marmalade For Tea” is a lovely lilting psych-lullaby, with spacey keys and a hypnotic roll to it. Quite twee and kids-tv folkish but not annoyingly so, it’s reminiscent of Flaming Lips and the kind of pastoral weirdness you can find on the “Welsh Rare Beat” compilations. Unsurprisingly so, as it turns out – singer Dennis Coyne is the nephew of Flaming Lip Wayne (cheers, Google!) – and though it’s definitely in the same ball park they’re playing by slightly different rules to Uncle.

“Chemical” is the other track here, and it’s half a world away from “Toast And Marmalade…”. A lo fi Kraut funk nugget that’s a great counterpart to the A-side – dirty, fuzzy and tense, with a nice stoner sheen to it.

Anyway, I think it’s available on import only – I picked it up in Rough Trade, so they should still have some lying about, there was a fair stack there…. you can also download a couple of other tracks from their m*sp*ce – Stardeath & White Dwarfs

By Our Man Fred