Don’t know how this release sneaked by me but it did and I must now pay a penance by reviewing it forthwith. Only this isn’t really a punishment as these six songs stomp all over the squidgy sensitivity and floppy fringes that have stunned my ears into indifference of late. Yes, folks, it is time for the Bastard Fairies to use their Man Made Monster EP to once more slaughter mediocrity.
I was about say that the opening song “Dirty Sex Kill Kill” was about a woman who has become a loser in love but that would understate the malevolent black and white emotional intensity that Yellow Thunder Woman cooks up as she sharpens her knife. Or knives. Or machetes. Never one to hold back, she then lets rip with a hugely over the top (in a Rocky Horror Picture sort of way) and melodramatic “Tool For Your Love”. You just know that – in the best film noir fashion – this isn’t going to end well and with the strongest of hints that an insanity defence is going to be used at her trial, she documents her torments in “Fait Accompli”.
With cheroot smoking civilisation seemingly used as a veneer, those dark shadows get visited again in “Silly Games” while Robin Davey plays his instruments with the edgy sleaziness of a man who has sold smack to the Devil. Pausing only to make sure the front door is locked, I draw inevitable conclusion that Yellow Thunder Woman is more than enough reason for a man to gain proficiency with firearms. Purely for self defence, of course.
So there you have it. An EP that barely manages to contain an explosion of anger, discontent and melodrama that, with very little effort, I could turn into a play that would get banned on its first night (unless I could pass it off as art, of course….). No one will ever write a song about a female politician but they will surely write a murder ballad or ten in honour of Yellow Thunder Woman. There’s a message in that.
Available as a download from Bandcamp.