Andy Blade + Buddies: Being Alive Is Enjoyable

Album Evaluate

Andy Blade + Buddies

Being Alive Is Enjoyable

Holy Dotage Information

LP / CD

Out 12 April 2024

Eater frontman, creator and all-round punk legend resumes his solo profession with ‘Being Alive Is Enjoyable’ an album of darkly-comic fashionable Glam.  Derwood from Technology X and Rat Scabies from the Damned are amongst a bunch of different youthful collaborator buddies.  You’re Unusual  and Eyeglass had been simply two of fifteen glimpses into bizarre & fantastic world of Andy Blade.  Ged Babey critiques.

“I do know I all the time say it, however this actually is my greatest solo album but” says Andy.

I give a web based equal of a nod, a ‘Yeah man’, once I’m pondering, is it actually nearly as good as Life Affirming Songs For These With Unhealthy Angle? – an album that had a superbly self descriptive title and was a piece of intelligent, humorous, vicious genius.

Andy Blade is on a roll although. Some riotous gigs along with his new younger line-up of Eater that he’s loved way over any Eater gigs within the distant previous. The three taster tracks to Being Alive Is Enjoyable being well-received and the seal of approval from his long-time heroes…

I had described the album as ‘sounding like a malevolent Sparks’.  I knew he’d like that, having all the time been a fan of the band. Their inventiveness and the oddness of their song-writing has seemingly rubbed off  and the one cowl model on the album is a Sparks music, ‘Lady From Germany’.

“My music is commonly cited as convey influenced by Sparks they usually had been early heroes of mine. Fortuitously they’ve enthusiastically given the thumbs as much as this model.”

The album title although is …

“… a quote from Jeffrey Epstein to his lawyer the day earlier than he was discovered lifeless in his cell.  His lawyer had requested him why he was so involved for his security in a prime safety jail and Epstein sarcastically replied, ‘As a result of being alive is enjoyable!’ 

Again in summer time 2022 the provisional title for what was then deliberate to be an EP of duets was “What Do You Get When You Cross a Mentally Unwell Loner…” . Referencing the Joker film.

Andy Blade has all the time had a darkish sense of humour and his songs appear to cowl as many tough topics as he can ( Baby abduction, shit terrorists, police honey traps, automotive bombs on the BBC…).  If society is a hornets nest of incompetence, corruption, hypocrisy and injustice then Blade is ceaselessly the unusual, outsider teenager poking it with a stick with see what occurs.

You’re Unusual might be the spotlight of the album – with it’s Derwood solo and drawling vocal and darkish lyric. (As I stated earlier than) Is it a love music on the sting of a nervous breakdown? It’s all the time laborious to inform with Andy Blade however there are some nice strains and a touch of paranoia and/or narcotics. ‘Somebody’s taken all of our stuff” There’s a contact of Luke Haines fashion aloofness about it and someway the air of an English Serge Gainsbourg.

His songs are all the time so stuffed with concepts and observations, satire & cynical humour, theories and his distinctive worldview, that it’s a must to deal with them as a puzzle to unravel, a riddle to work out your self generally.

‘Eyeglass’ additionally options Katerina (Kat) Sharkova from The Others Are Lifeless, Steve, who sings on three of the album tracks and is now a long run member of Andy’s band, on vocals. ‘A unusual, darkish horse of a music, an infectious tousled tango’  Blade referred to as it, elaborating right here.

Of the younger and largely feminine ‘buddies’, the title observe options the voice of Ananda from the mighty AlterModerns. The aforementioned Kat, Paige Brooklyn Cook dinner and Myura Amara sing on three songs every. Elizabeth Westwood, Berenice, Roxi Gregory,  Mathew Cartiledge and Tizane seem on one music apiece.  They add a youthful enthusiasm to proceedings however a few of it’s submerged within the bedsit Spector combine which creates a barely claustrophobic psychedelic vibe at instances.  Blade doesn’t imagine in ‘much less is extra’ and a producer from outdoors Andys tight-knit circle could have been a good suggestion.

Secret Door, Magic Trick, (She doesn’t seen to really feel that) This Is Actual and Falling Down all appear to be linked by the sensation that modern-life is illusory and disconnected as a result of media-saturation or a life-lived on-line.  I purposely didn’t ask Blade what the songs had been ‘about’ – desirous to work out the riddles and puzzles myself for a change…. nevertheless it’s not straightforward.

Taking part in Mickey Mouse have to be in regards to the insanity of the USA immediately and You Don’t Have To Watch This is a captivating title – making me consider all of the trashy, exploitative tv on the market, equated with the compulsion to look at splatter-movie gore and peoples obsession with ‘true crime’ and it’s abdomen churning vileness.

Musically the songs are quick, sharp, glam-pop, TV theme, artwork pop not dissimilar to the work of Lawrence (Felt, Denim, Go-Kart) with whom Blade has a mutual admiration factor happening. The chunky guitar riffs mix superbly with the off-kilter electronics, making the album sound old-school but ultra-modern.

In A Repair With A Narcissist is one other album spotlight – that includes Elizabeth Westwood – take a look on the video-clip under (and men-of-a-certain-age will fall for her over again. No, that’s not objectification,  it’s appreciation that some folks have a magnetic magnificence… nice cheekbones…)

It’s A Idiot’s World is one other conundrum in music kind,  While London Loves You joins the various songs in regards to the love/hate relationship that’s residing within the capital – however urges you to depart quite than stay.

One music that makes a welcome reappearance, that long-term Blade followers will recognise is The Lady Who Forgets Every thing.  Initially showing on From Planet Pop To The Psychological Store (1994) which featured songs recorded between 1987 and 1992, it later featured on 2005’s Treasure Right here as ‘The Lady’.

Being Alive Is Enjoyable is kind of probably Andy Blades most cohesive, full and curiously fulfilling solo album thus far: stuffed with concepts, stuffed with enjoyable, a forged of gifted collaborators, relishing the possibility to work with a cult hero – nevertheless it’s as inscrutable, darkish and idiosyncratic as it’s catchy, likeable and good.

Andy Blade won’t ever make a dumb, retro-punk-by-numbers album – and like Luke Haines, Lawrence from Go-Kart Property and Sparks, he stays, the tough, cult, outsider hero to whom lesser artists can solely aspire.

Andy Blade + Buddies shall be taking part in some pop up reveals at uncommon venues and an album launch-gig-party on 12 April  (TONIGHT!) at Sprint The Henge Document retailer in Camberwell, London.

The brand new band options Andy Blade on guitar and vox, singer Katerina Sharkova, guitarist Jerome Alexandre (Pete Doherty, Deadcuts), Chris OC (PhoboPhobes) on keys, drummer Joni Belaruski (Teenage Werewolves) and Aaron Scar (Olympus Mons) on bass.

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All phrases Ged Babey