Uncle Blowfish
Fusion Monkey EP
Uncle Blowfish are the first band to openly state that they are skate-punk. This statement may not seem very relevant, so I’ll explain. There are approximately 1,000 skate-punk bands out there that sound exactly link Blink 182 or Sum 41 – and that’s per populated square mile of Europe. None of these bands want to be called skate-punk, they all say things like ‘we don’t fit into a pigeon-hole’ or ‘we are trans-genre musical travellers playing innovative never before heard music’. The more adamant the denial, the longer the description, the worse the band is.
Therefore, you will understand my unrestrained joy over a minor detail. Something that isn’t a minor detail however is the music. ‘Here I Go Again’ quite simply has the catchiest chorus ever. The switches between verse, breaks, and chorus help it to lift in an anthem of stadium proportions.
Becky Holloway’s voice is incredibly beautiful; easily the kind of voice chart-show listeners would love, but thankfully employed in something a bit more creative. With a vocal such as this, I imagine the rest of this band often get forgotten – however, Rob Dunne deserves recognition for the subtle ingenuity of the little rhythmic licks that make each song interesting.
Second track, ‘Your Boyfriend’, is a bit more like Busted than Skate Punk, but it’s still good and ‘That Girl’ sheds a pop-rock light on the overall mixture of sounds. This track sees some great work from the drums and bass.
The standard is kept vigorously high with ‘Packet of 3’, which has some excellent harmonic guitar rakes and the most skate punk riffery on the EP as well as the punkiest chorus.
Final track ‘You Don’t Know Me’ has an incredibly Blink 182 moment in the break. Suddenly it dawns on me. This album isn’t skate-punk at all. Admittedly there are moments that could be given that description, but there are far more moments that fall in to a different categories altogether.
Basically what we have here is a band that haven’t over-sold themselves on paper because they know that this EP says everything for them.
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Written by Fenton on
