Casio Rock!
Experimental band, Capulets base a lot of their sound around a couple of retro Casio keyboards, and this sounds like a true recipe for disaster…except it works! Like Beastie Boys’ buddy, Keyboard Money Mark, keyboards have never sounded so good! Main man Luke Hebblethwaite sings and plays guitar, whilst Pietro ‘Pete’ DeSants plays the keyboards in a way that comes together with ease and satisfaction.
What we get here is a touch of the music mavericks from the likes of The Crimea, mixed with a hint of Indie-fuzz like a chilled Fugazi, and then brought together with the touches of a mad electrical scientist. ‘Hope Springs’ has a Country-rhythm of bass and guitar before funky keyboards jump in like little space men. The song is catchy and simple, and sounds like you’d expect a Folk song of the future to sound like.
‘Valley’ has chugging fuzzy riffs whilst keyboards sound out like sirens giving an 80’s sound a little like the whip it boys, Devo mixed with Nerf Herder. It’s an interesting mid-range tune that is Dark-Electro-Pop-Rock, if of course there was such a thing…
If the other songs leaned towards Pop, then the riff-tastic fuzzbox of ‘Pay Mr Clean Cut’ is firmly nodding it’s long hair towards a harder Rock. The song content is interesting as it is about the conspiracy that Paul McCartney is actually dead, and whilst the lyrics aren’t always easy to pick up, we are told that the song is told entirely using anagrams. Impressive.
Capulets are a band that experiment. They don’t try to hide away from this. What they have produced here is some good stuff, and each song isn’t so different that it sounds like three separate genres. The EP flows well, and the mix of fuzzy guitars, and keyboards that are more subtler than this review might suggest, make a good combination. What we essentially get is Fu Manchu with keyboard sounds. No bad at all, although I have a feeling that the band are still evolving, and the sound may just be tweaked a little more for future releases…