JOHNNY 5TH WHEEL AND THE COWARDS Music To Shake 'n' Shuffle To

‘Happy Clappy/Doom Jazz’ is the third track on the second collection from Lancashire's Johnny5thWheelandthecowards. Well, if the cap fits... the title of that breezy brass-and-harmonica party hoe-down doubles nicely as a musical summary of a good part of this rum collection of vaudevillian cabaret pop. But it’s not all rag-time japes - said song also contains the line “Bad juju on the rise / feels like Crowley is pissing in my eyes" neatly demonstrating how everything is not as straightforward as it first appears in the looking glass world of Mr 5thWheel and his merry troubadours. This dark-and-light album follows earlier singles including the AA side ‘Nancy/In My Laboratory’ (“Jacques Brel quietly rakish with a folky air” and “a nifty piece of boffin-pop” respectively was the opinion here back in May) and is a piquant smorgasbord of tall tales, askance observations and relationships-with-a-twist delivered with some fine enunciation (no lyric sheet needed here).

So this 36 minute, 12 song sojourn includes stop-overs for the tipsy piano-and-barbershop apology (to a son or family pet?) of 'Spike' and the 3am agree-to-disagree relationship soft-shuffle duet/duel of ‘Conversations With You When You're Not There’; the smoky suburban crime jazz-blues of ‘Where Did I Sleep Last Night?’, the cafe accordion waltz of self-doubt ‘My Finest Hour’ and the bowed saw wail of country lament ‘Blame In Campodia’. Maybe not as deviant or wildly maverick as their copy book suggests, the knotty moods and assorted settings for songs are as varied as the appropriated styles.



As the skiffle-calypso of ‘Yes We're Stealing Your Soul’ admits: “Yes we're stealing your soul / but you were pissing it down the drain”. For a nation of time-wasters listening to too much mainstream earnest ‘indie’ ear-drool, Johnny5thWheelandthecowards should be a “stout and red wine mixed” antidote of clever, engaging pop. Sadly their sweetly companionable if not wholly soul-stealing tune-smithery will probably go over-looked.



Johnny5thWheelandthecowards Music To Shake 'n' Shuffle To [BUY]

JOHNNY 5TH WHEEL & THE COWARDS Nancy / In My Laboratory

This - the third single from their forthcoming second album - is my first proper listen to Prestonian pranksters Johnny 5th Wheel And The Cowards. Or as the band would have it johnny5thwheelandthecowards. The first song on this AA release is not packed so heel-to-toe tightly as that compressed version of their name. ‘Nancy’ turns out to be a leisurely unfolding tale of “a man obsessed / by a dream of a girl possessed” featuring librarians, a giant eye-ball and an abrupt ending. For all the dressing-box flamboyance to their self-proclaimed 'steampunk-doom-jazz', this oddity is more modest, a meeker Jacques Brel quietly rakish with a folky air.





Companion piece, and more obvious single material, is ‘In My Laboratory’, a nifty piece of boffin-pop that combines ‘Monster Mash’ silliness and groove with the playful seriousness of fellow contraption-wrangler Thomas Truax. For all the surreal lunacy of said laboratory ( “10,000 purple moon-bears dance for me / Genghis Khan is coming round for tea”), it’s also a playground where its mad scientist “could do anything”. These two brief tracks, despite their idiosyncratic charms, don’t have the space to push all those boundaries yet but this tantalising teaser bodes well for September’s sophomore album. The single is out on 25 June via Sotones.



Johnny 5th Wheel And The Cowards Nancy/In My Laboratory [BUY]