Monday 21 May 2012

Johnny 5th Wheel and the Cowards.


It's a strange experience listening to Johnny 5th Wheel and the Cowards, but it's a sort of good-strange feeling- I like it... But reviewing these two songs has taken so long, merely because I couldn't find the words to fit with this music- and I still can't!
The 6-piece (although by my calculations, there's 9 in that picture) from the North-West of England are specialists in the art of creating strange, almost hypnotic music that is described as "steam punk, doomjazz."
The band made their first release in 2010 with their debut album 'Tales of...' and soon after signed to Sotones Records where they are due to release their second album in September.

However, first of all they are to release their double A-side 'Nancy/In My Laboratory' which will be their third single from the upcoming album- this will be out on the 25th of June.

To be honest, it's pretty hard to follow what goes on in these songs, but Nancy starts off slowly and builds and builds up, singing about a girl called Nancy (who turns out to actually be named Lil). It's almost a fantasy/dream like feeling, given off throughout this song, though the rhythm of the increasing musical pace sounds more like something out of a horror film.


In My Laboratory is just as hard to follow. It is dedicated to the lineage of scientists and storytellers, in particular Tom Waites and Thomas Truax. The rest of their 'laboratory' is filled with an American Cartoonist, deceased musicians and many former Mongol Emperors...or something along those lines, feel free to make up your own mind and leave a comment if you can decrypt these coded songs.


I was not allowed to embed these songs onto the blog post so you will have to click the link below which will take you to Soundcloud- enjoy!


Johnny5thWheel&thecowards - Nancy/In My Laboratory

2 comments:

  1. Such good undercover band, i feel like a hipster but no, these bands are really good, wow

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi - Andy from the band here, just wanted to let you know the single was officially released today! How exciting. You can buy it from our bandcamp page here:
    http://johnny5thwheel.bandcamp.com/album/nancy-in-my-laboratory-single

    ReplyDelete