Features

Lounge Fly are a new band with an old, old history. Lead singer Susannah Moffatt has been a stalwart of the Gloucestershire music scene for several years now.

She first came to this reviewers attention with her guest vocal on Jayl's "Sweet Baby Shark".

Elsewhere in the Gloucestershire music scene, a group of musicians with one of the best band names ever were charming the county with their own brand of pop-meets-rock.

They were called The Mild Mannered Janitors.

Now the two bands have joined forces to form not The Mild Mannered Flies (which would be a very watered down version of a William Golding novel) or the Lounge Janitors (which could only be a caretaker collective doing Rat Pack covers), but Lounge Fly: the funkiest band to hit Gloucestershire this year.

Lounge Fly

It's a Sin

Lounge Fly have released an EP containing seven songs. It's called Seven Simple Sins.

A couple of the songs have been heard before in previous the band's previous incarnations.

The other four are more recent tracks. All of them will rock your hat and scarves off in the winter weather.

The songs are feisty numbers, bursting with more deadly sins than you could shake a DVD of Se7en at.

Chief amongst them is envy with 'Charlie's Got Too Much Cash', 'I Hope It Rains' and 'Your Shoes'. But there's also gluttony and greed in abundance in 'Heed'.

There's a fair bit of wrath thrown in for good measure too. 'Happy Bubble' is full of it. So is 'Not Something I'd Do', but 'Steady' (a track previously known as 'Cheap Champagne') is over flowing with the stuff.

Mad with Men

The whole song is a vitriolic attack on a man's pulling technique: "Well, you should have got here sooner/when I was younger and naļve/I'm well acquainted with your type/rohypnol up your sleeve" is a pretty standard lyric for a band yet to discover the joys of anger management.

The anger pours through 'Not Something I'd Do' as well.

It's a track filled with bitterness and seething resentment: "If I were a different person/I would take her to one side/and whisper words of revelation/watch her eyes as the open wide" runs the opening line of the song.

There's more of where that came from. Much, much more.

The End of the World as we Know it

There's also a sense of hedonism as the world hurtles towards its own self imposed end in the lyrics.

It's most obvious in the dire end-on-the-world-is-nigh predictions of the man on the street in 'Heed', but it's also there in the microcosm of the girl whose own world has come to an end now that her ex is marrying another woman ('I Hope it Rains').

It's there in the artificiality of the world inhabited by women like Charlie in 'Charlie's Got Too Much Money' and it's there in the women who aim to be like her in 'Your Shoes'.

Pretty Fly

Each song is delivered with a funky swagger that melds the gutsy Garbage (there's more than just a similarity in names between this band's weather related track and 'Only Happy When it Rains') and perennial funksters, The Red Hot Chili Peppers.

It's a full, full sound complete with parping brass and keyboards to accompany the usual band line-up.

At times there's a hint of the heavy, heavy sound of Madness meets The Blues Brothers ('Happy Bubble') while at other times there's a strange fusion of Ska meets Hebrew folk song in 'Heed'.

Bite Me

This music is fantastically funky, filled with barbed lyrics and even sharper guitar licks. The songs have edge and grit and an attitude that bites.

The artists formerly known as Susannah/Moonfish/Mild Mannered Janitors have triumphed with a collection of standout tracks to keep your head banging and your toes tapping (and to keep men afraid of women for a good long while!).

With such a good line-up, let's hope that Lounge Fly are here to stay.

Well, I say "here". Perhaps "somewhere over there" would be better. I value my manhood a little too much to risk close contact.

This article is an external contribution and expresses a personal opinion, not necessarily the views of the BBC.

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If you're involved in the Gloucestershire music scene and you would like Stephen to review your music, please feel free to get in touch. Either email gloucestershire@bbc.co.uk or send your album and a bit about yourself to:

BBC Gloucestershire Introducing...
London Road
Gloucester
GL1 1SW

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