Atmospherically oppressive yet shot through with twisted humour, Viking Moses’ slightly-too-late-for-Halloween horror-electro-folk effort ‘Werewolves In The City’ is a Goonies tale set to stirringly crackled beats and the sort of wolverine howling only previously associated with the most detached of male songwriters – Nick Cave is the first to spring to mind, leaping like a ghoul from a vine-shrouded crypt.
Intelligence is soaked into the sponge of Viking’s fantasy-spilling psyche – talk of “panopticon eyes” ensures that his story of werewolves tearing up kids, swooping from the skies to do so, is never totally kiddie-tale stuff. His lyrics are clever, witty (“I’m a biker, but not like Harley Davidson…”) and enriched with truly unique personality; the scratchy arrangement that lurches and fuzzes about the screams of “last night I found a kid’s head on my bike” means that the listener never feels wholly comfortable with what’s been presented for their aural digestion. This is challenging, albeit enjoyably so.
A million stylistic miles away from Viking’s more-relaxed excursions into lyrical topics of love and associated emotions, ‘Werewolves In The City’ is a fiendish delight that’s worthy of your concentrated attention whether witches are flying overhead or Easter bunnies are leaving chocolate eggs at the bottom of your garden. It’s to be enjoyed, inverted commas, at any time of the year. Wonderfully out there stuff from a truly special, truly one-off solo artist.
Listen now on MySpace.
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8Mike Diver's Score