Moustache Of Insanity. Moustache. Of. Insanity. Say it out loud – go on – and then try to take it all seriously. Savour the feeling, the realisation that music is not necessarily there to be taken seriously, not even a little bit. Then, if you’re half smart, you’ll realise that anyone who does apply that sort of seriousness to it all is probably not the type you want round your place, drinking your booze. Moustache Of Insanity are SO not that guy.
The boys from Moustache Of Insanity are, by contrast, the perfect party guest – musical, funny, charming and way less of an idiot than you are, by a country mile. They were in town at the same time as Allo’ Darlin – Bill, who had a tache before Movember was popular, also plays with them – and because that meant we had two things to do at the same time, meant we weren’t as prepared as (ahem) we could have been, so we ended up winging it a bit when it came to finding a location. Ambling up towards Edinburgh Castle though, we thought we’d struck gold with what was described as a ‘nature sanctuary’, but what effectively is a small garden with a bench, some needles and a lot of empty super-strenth cider bottles strewn around the place.
After a fair bit of clambering over locked gates and so on, we finally get all set up and despite the garden supposedly providing some kind of protection for bunny rabbits and squirrels and stuff, it was still the windiest spot on God’s green earth. As if trying to prevent the band from taking off like Mary Poppins wasn’t tricky enough, we also found out that we had an audience of a local nutbag, showing his appreciation by smashing his bottle against a wall and glowering like we’d all insulted his sister. Still, the fear of being murdered added a certain zip to proceedings.
Both tracks here are perfectly-formed little snippets of daftness, with Nik’s tiny little keyboard and Bill’s acoustic guitar chattering along behind the stream of wry and well-crafted lyrics. It’s like The Ramones writing Belle & Sebastian records. Initially these tracks sound a little throwaway, but a repeat listen reveals a truly heartfelt, almost melancholic feel in these genuine love songs.
Anyway, we’ve got two tracks here, ‘Email’ and ‘Cheese And Freckles’, and we bet you can’t make it through either one without smiling broadly at least twice – and if you can come up with a better criteria for awesome pop music than that then … well, you’re beyond our or anyone else’s help.
