Some people are in bands to get girls. Others get into it through hanging out and smoking crack with the wrong kind of people. A few weirdos enjoy bouncing around the UK's finest shitty toilet venues in a battered transit van. Edward J. Hicks isn't any of those; he's in a band, we think, because he simply couldn't be imagined doing anything else.
If Ed's motivation to play is hard to categorize, we'd better not even try to pigeonhole the music itself. Suffice it to say that there's a thick stain of Tom Waits about the Skeleton Hand man, a bruised, prowling junk-pop sensibility that roots though the musical dustbins of the world in rock'n'roll's back alley, making feasts from the leftovers other, saner individuals throw out.
And yet, he's also defiantly Ed. Himself, a man alone, a one-person lightning rod for frustration, alienation and annihilation with a DIY edge that is peculiarly British. Tape players, Fisher-Price megaphones - and string vests. All grist to his mill. All tainted by his association.
This year - if rumours are true and God's looking the other way - we may yet lose him to plusher, more-well-funded pastures new where girls bring you coctails and they get people in at night to shampoo the carpets. But our loss is music's gain.
whoooooop
edouard'home phone' is ace! love all the new songs but home phone most of all.... all together now: aahh
aaahh
By lonely_joe_parker at 2008-03-14 18:20:28 | Report spam | sign in to comment.