The Family Battenberg are not unlike a Battenberg cake. They’re soft, spongy, multi-coloured and made of flour, egg, sugar and food colourings. Or, they’re divided into quarters. As in, there are four of them. And they have four major spheres of influence. Rock, obviously. Spiders. Fuzz. And Wales.
They don’t tend to go for the quantity over quality angle, before May’s ‘Anteater’ they had only released four singles in three years, but they were all absolute blinders. No pressure, just big fat riff soaked bangers.
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching us to war. But what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. It’s marching us down a path and it’s a bit ‘Foggy‘. Baaaaaah bah bah baaaaah. Fucking fuzz-tastic. A riot of meaty riffs and cheesy chips.
‘Gwyllgi ‘ (Welsh for “Go Wild”) is a handful of hallucinogenics, a bottle of 20:20 and a dirty floored nightclub in 1974. Carpeted. With fag burns and suspicious stains. The breakdown is canning the can so hard the heel of their platform boots has snapped off.
‘Friend Of Mine’ is the dawn, but instead of a purple and orange sunrise, it’s torrential rain, grey skies over the valleys and the comedown. It’s nice to have a bit of a respite amongst the assault of the heavy heavy monster show.
The live version of these, plus previous singles like ‘Runny Hunny’ and ‘Rocket Dustbin’ have given them the reputation for wild and wonderful performances and the implied promise you will go home with partial deafness and flesh dripping from your face. Andy Jones, the great mind behind Focus Wales is now the gaffer in the dugout but this is still a self released first slab of wax, recorded at Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard‘s Tom Rees’ studio in Cardiff. A producer in demand but they decided to wait until he went on holiday to record.
‘Spiders’ is the veritable slap across the chops out of your mid morning hangover, with a can of full fat coke and a Rothmans ciggy. Right as rain. This one does make you think back to that first Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard EP funnily enough. There’s ghosts in those walls.
‘Anteater’ we’ve been here before. The first cut back in May, it’s direct, like a Joe Kinnear Wimbledon long ball. In the best possible way, there’s nothing intricate or complicated about The Fam. It really is like having the best possible time, in the moment, whilst the world burns outside. It does sound like the roof has come in at the end of a ramped up, chaotic finale.
‘Ghouls Conga Line’ is deceptive. You think it’s a spooky, quiet closer. Ha ha, no. The floating white sheet is about to jump out from behind the door. Or the Scream mask. But don’t worry, it’s not a murderer. No, well hopefully not anyway. You never know. They might be trying to kill fuzz with so much distortion and the pedal turned up to eleven. Crackly.
By the end, you get what they mean by Spider Rock Forever. It is a giant arachnid of a racket. Eight limbs of pure, unadulterated rock. Once you’ve heard it, you can’t get out of the web and you’re going to be devoured like the dirty little fly you are. The Spider Rock is having you for dinner. Tonight.
