They’re installing meters in the trees, there’s no air to breathe, forget the time we panicked for free.

Definitely not breaking any new ground with this one either…

Magoo

Magoo have been around for quite some time now (over ten years I think), but up until now have not really made big enough waves to reach from Norwich to the distant shores of far off Gloucester (water analogies are big round here, these days…). In those ten years they’ve released six albums and recorded seven John Peel sessions, but it’s only their last album, “The All Electric Amusement Arcade”, that’s really grabbed my attention (I say that as if I’m well acquainted with all their albums, which isn’t true – though give me time…)

On the surface, Magoo just seem to do good pop songs (nothing wrong with that…), but I really like the extra washes of nerdy studio sound they can’t resist adding to their already strong songwriting. Although, it’s all very modern stuff, there’s definitely a strong hint of sixties Psychedelia in with it. In fact it all seems to take place inside a brightly coloured bubble which you don’t quite appreciate from the outside, but inside…

And what I really like about it is that it all includes using a number of different sounds and effects that I traditionally can’t stand – synths, for example, and even one of those cheesy voice-modifiers a number of times. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in the year and a half I’ve been doing this Blog, for each of my prejudices against particular sounds, someone will step forward and use it in a new and interesting way that will make me think again.

And so it is with Magoo, a good example of this would be the excellent “Expansion Ride”, which comes from The All Electric Amusement Arcade. The other tracks are older ones, from the “Close Continental DNA” and “The Soateramic Sounds of …” albums respectively.

Expansion Ride

Polka Party No 2

Queen of the 8-Bus Singers

Magoo have a Myspace page, but the real treasure trove is their page at the Sickroom, where you can snag a load of extra tracks from each of there album, eleven in all – very generous, and all power to them, I say…

(Oh, and to save you the trouble, I already looked “soateramic” up in the dictionary – I think they made it up…)