The Lovely Eggs – I Like Birds But I like Other Animals Too (Filthy Little Angels)

Living up to their name (the ‘Lovely’ bit mainly), The Lovely Eggs sent me a charming letter along with their CD. It’s got drawings in different coloured felt-tips and everything. Like their letter, The Lovely Eggs music has a cracked-childhood deranged sweetness to it. On first listen, their record is a trifle startling, but then you get all endeared by the simple kid-fi honesty of their songs.

Lead track, ‘I Like Birds But I Like Other Animals Too’ has got the most ‘instrumentation’ going on, skittering along on trashy, thrashy guitar, twinkling glockenspiel and Holly’s Violet-Elizabeth brat vocals. “Cuck, cuckoo, cuck, cuckoo, cuck, cuckoo koo” they sing and the see-saw tune rams itself into your brain for good, like someone singing, “I know a song that’ll get on your nerves”, only without the getting on your nerves bit.

Next, set against the military patter of a drum and one-note recorder tootling, Holly sings a paean to the brill illustrator Jon Carling (www.myspace.com/ifeltthat), “I know an artist and he draws about owls”. It’s a fitting tribute; curious, a little twisted, fallen-down-a-rabbit-hole magical – like Carling’s work. The song is preceded by fellow Egg David (maybe?) listing different breeds of owl – soothing/unsettling.

Then there are assorted la la lo lo fi ravings, 'Dirty At Farms/I'm Having A Party/Cops And Robbers/Fade' which sound like the tapes we made as kids, singing earnestly but a bit stupidly, enjoying just making stuff, saying whatever; “I always get my shoes dirty at farms”; “Cops and robbers, crime and punishment, cops and robbers”.

‘I’m Having A Party’ has muffled vocals and a rattling drum that might not be a drum and is reminiscent of the first Beat Happening album – tracks recorded RIGHT HERE with 0 instruments – no production or layers of blah, just straight-up communication of songs and ideas, out of their mouths and into yr ears.

When The Lovely Eggs music comes to an end, you feel a bit bereft, like you’ve been playing with your mates all day, caught up in your own zig-zagging world and now they’ve gone home for tea and it’s just you and normalness again.

www.myspace.com/thelovelyeggs