This eight-piece band take their name from a Magic Roundabout story and the album is named after an amusement arcade in Coventry which has since become Fun Bob's Funhouse, a location described as " a place where community comes first and consumerism a distant last".
As you might gather, offbeat humour is high on the agenda but it comes heavily tinged with cynicism - their record label isn't called grumpy fun for nothing.
You'll get some inkling of their curious sound if you imagine a scenario in which The Teardrop Explodes had talked Disney into making a kids record and rather than writing cheery ditties wrote lyrics like "we're sick of your dreams of Mickey Mouse" instead.
This is a record that could only have been made in England and quite possibly only in the Midlands. They are strolling minstrels from Birmingham led by a droll crooner who calls himself Grandmaster Gareth, a man who, legend has it, was once referred to by John Peel as 'the new God'.
They've been going for 15 years and ,counting self released albums, this is their ninth record. Their stage show feature Erotic Volvo, a male dancer who wears a red sack festooned with stuffed blue gloves (don't ask).
The twelve tracks feature an array of anti-rock styles from lounge to jazz and the whole is a pastiche of something or other. They even rope in a children's choir and get veteran TV astronomer Sir Patrick Moore to tell a story of General Confusion and Major Misunderstanding.
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It all seems like a joke record until you begin to realise there are no punch lines. It's more funny strange, than funny ha-ha.
On Aggression, the Grandmaster is deadly serious when he sings "I'm not some hippy after peace and love/ Just sick of everybody trying act so tough". Similarly, songs like I See A Cloud and Just Another Day are not so happy-go-lucky as they first appear.
At the risk of over simplification I would describe these songs are variations on the theme of looking for a reason to get out of bed in the morning.
My own reaction is summed up by one of the messages on the family scrapbook-style sleeve: "My poor heart has lost the art of understanding".
Misty's Big Adventure's Website
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