aaamusic | On 26, Apr 2011

Fight Like Apes are a successful band especially in Ireland, their hometown, their new album reached the 3 position in the Irish chart and now they are trying to conquer the UK  with a remarkable work, created with attention to arrangements and sounds.  The Body of Christ and the Legs of Tina Turner is a mix of Misfits ‘ hard rock, Siouxsie’s punk  and Blondie’s glam style, melted with a passion for B-movies from which the band samples sentences and dialogues, like in Waking up with Robocop. They massively play synths and moog using sounds that seems soundtracks of a videogame, combined at the same time with a valzer tempo, as in the last track Ice cream apple fuck, giving the tune an electro-Irish-folk halo.

Fight like apes are a many-sided band with a huge music knowledge and very good influences, but I think that they miss the spark, that kind of power that makes your heart beat when you listen to their music.

Obviously it’s a mere personal matter, but when I find that absence , their bravura and the singer’s strong personality become almost annoying because it’s like they were wasted. In fact their music can be loved at first listening or it can be ignored, maybe it succeeds in crawling under people skin after many listenings.

Leaving out personal and emotional feelings The Body of Christ and the Legs of Tina Turner is an album that prefer synthesizers to guitars, anthemic choruses and it has a tendency to lighten its darkest melodies with moog solos. Also it has a 80s aura manifesting itself with big synth tapestries, reminding the best music of those years like Siouxsie, but it shows some 90s feelings, as in Poached Eggs that has a Blink 182 taste and an infectious refrain.

There’s no lack of Bowie’s atmospheres as well, as in Come On, Lets Talk About Our Feelings, a harmonic duet between male and female vocals accompanied by the usual synth backdrop.

The single Jenny Kelly is the most flamboyant electro-indie tune, with a  exhilarating groove and a beautiful bassline while Pull Off Your Arms And Let’s Play In Your Blood starts with a sample from a movie and a dark matching between drums and guitars cleared by a remarkable moog on the backdrop.

Hoo Ha Henry and Captain A-bomb are more buoyant tunes, the first sounds like a videogame track and I can suggest them to follow this kind of mood that makes them more recognizable and tasty..

Katmandu seems a slower version of a Wombats song eriche by strings and always present electronic effect.

As I said before it’s a very good album indeed and I can recommend it even if I didn’t find that famous “spark”, maybe someone else will succeed in finding it.

Author: Roberta Capuano