Eight Legs - The Electric Kool Aid Cuckoo Nest Album Review

With a wacky name to go with some very wacky indeed artwork featuring the band dressed in animal suits, you're half expecting a zany Wombats sound from the Stratford Upon Avon 4 piece Eight Legs. Instead what's served up is a straight down the line indie/rock n roll album that at times flirts with the idea of punk without offering anything original.

There's an air of Dandy Warhol's about album opener I Understand, not only in the intentionally uninterested monotone vocals but also in terms of the guitar playing throughout the track, simple yet effective.

It's obvious quite early on that this going to be a record with huge retrospective leanings throughout. I'll admit the track 'Wish It Was The 60s' sort of gave the game away early on, but it's quickly apparent that Eight Legs seem to take a similar approach to song writing as the La's, stripping down sounds from past eras and throwing in some characteristics of modern guitar bands for good measure. Just So You Know is about as Beatles as you can get, reminiscent of their earlier work, it features melodic lead guitars as well as heightening backing vocals much in the vein of the fab four.

This isn't an album that's heavy on production, there are very few gimmicks here, what you have instead is a plug in and play debut album that shows you what the band are all about. The Electric Kool-Aid Cuckoo Nest isn't the most innovative album to hit the shelves in recent times, but equally it clearly doesn't want to be, it has no interest in inventing or inviting you to a new sound, not all bands can do that. However recreating past sounds in an interesting way isn't an easy task, there are many bands that have tried and failed, only achieving a turgid hollow reflection of the past that leaves listeners motionless. Eight legs despite borrowing heavily from the past, ironically succeed in sounding fresh.

Sam Marland