aaamusic | On 26, Feb 2012

As much of a backhanded compliment as “Hungary’s most successful rock singer” sounds, apparently it’s one that describes Lazlo in a nutshell, listening to his latest E.P… doesn’t exactly explain how that came about. It’s defiantly lo-fi, at least, as much as anything literally recorded in a barn can be, and the quality and tone wildly fluctuates. The title track, for example, is a ramshackle slice of anti folk that on the surface resembles Jeffrey Lewis doing a Jack Johnson style “Bro-with-an-acoustic-guitar” song until you listen to the horribly cringe worthy lyrics. Rarely for a foreign artist, this can’t be waved away with things being lost in translation or him not having the best grasp on a language that isn’t his first, as quite a lot has been made of Lazlo’s work with English songwriters to better his chances of recognition in this fair country, which means he seriously wanted to have his song open with the line “Venus / my girl / with a penis”. This worry’s me.

 

I’m The Man is as bad in a very different, but equally bizarre way, based around acoustic guitar, buzzing synth bass and a hammy, spoken word vocal. Both are baffling, tedious and I Will Eat, while an improvement, is not much better, self consciously quirky, organ led and low key, it’s one of the few songs I’ve heard that’s simultaneously overlong and unmemorable. With this in mind, it’s all the more incongruous that second track Rabbit Not A Man is so frighteningly, impossibly, balls to the wall AWESOME. The only time on the E.P Lazlo seems to cut loose and not worry about sounding utterly mental, over a wall of savage, power pop guitar riffs, one note keyboard lines and an utterly thrilling sense of momentum that never lets up. It’s completely wonderful, the only thing that suggests that Lazlo might be worth the hype his record company throw at him, and what makes this E.P so frustrating, as it’s very nearly not worth going through the other three tracks for this one. Nearly. If you can, single out this track, there is nothing else of interest on the E.P, but what a track to be interested in.

 

Will Howard