Glass Famine - Grumbling Bellies

This is a brief one because it’s a single song review of Glass Famine’s “Grumbling Bellies.”

So, I suppose it’s time to resurrect that old BBC chestnut, Juke Box Jury. You know, that BBC show in which four celebrities debate the merits of a current 45 rpm record. Sadly, my celebs of choice—Nicki Minaj, Justin Bieber, Harry Styles (from One Direction fame), and Trump White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders—failed to return my calls, even when I revealed my international mega street cred ace card, as staff writer and sometime, perhaps, gig reviewer for our very own British on-line music magazine, Soundblab. Go figure.

Well, that left my friend, Kilda Defnut, and myself to shoulder the judicial burden.

And Kilda says it’s a hit! She admits it’s not a danceable song, but she loved the lead vocalist who sounds a bit like the sweet Ray Davies of, say, “Waterloo Sunset” with some “Sha-la-las,” but then morphs into a more deadpan Lou Reed vibe. She also loved the enigmatic lyrics that, perhaps, anchored a theme around the lines “And it turns out the bell-sheep gets slaughtered like the rest” and the final bit that states, “It’s the lie that makes them pretty.”

I concur. It’s a hit. I mean, it’s not exactly “Love Me Do,” but the guitar skids around and is sort of jazzy; and the harmony vocals are almost sublime. There is a slow echo of Bowie in the tune. And I always enjoy a song that never bothers with an actual chorus, but it does include a reference to a “knock-off Burne-Jones tapestry.” Foghat’s “Slowride” never did that.

Yeah, this is oblique arty stuff, but it’s interesting arty stuff. In fact, it reminds me of The Band of Holy Joy with a brand of off center folk-rock that is always oddly compelling.

By the way, despite the celeb no-shows, I take some solace in the fact that my Soundblab credentials (and five dollars) can still get me a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

So, ring the Beeb’s bell, and, you know, tell Tchaikovsky the news. My only complaint is the usual EP gripe: Let’s hear an album. It’s a bit like Tantalus who would like to taste the low-hanging fruit. I eagerly await an album of long-playing plastic, an album that extends these curious short grooves into the realm that’s beyond anyone’s “knock-off tapestry,” or, for that matter, any “lie that makes them pretty.”