First let’s tackle the elephant in the room. That name. Cockwomble. It seems to divide opinion. After sharing videos and links in the past I’ve had several people say to me the name is ridiculous. I’m not totally going to disagree; the word in itself is ridiculous. But as Adam Ant once said, ridicule is nothing to be scared of…
cockwomble (countable and uncountable, plural cockwombles)
- (Britain,slang,derogatory) A foolish or obnoxious person.
21st Century weirdness
This 21st century created word is a by-product of the weird times we find ourselves living in, creating a new word is not entirely unusual, all generations have created their own words and insults. The first time I saw the word used was when it was used to describe a certain Boris Johnson, the sound of the word and image it created seemed to describe his bumbling oafish manner perfectly. The timing of the album is seemingly perfect with current political climes.
To me, the name works.
1 – if nothing else, it has people talking about the band
2 – the seeming ridiculousness of the name, to me at least, is overall partly what the band is about. When you take the word and connect it with the songs and lyrics. Lyricist Ali seemingly as incredulous as I am to the bizarre absurdity of the world we live in and the events that keep happening to continue in such a vein.
Just listen to the music
So, just get past the name and listen to the tunes.
Six songs have appeared on their earlier Henchmen, Conspiracy and All of the Money! None of the Style! EPs, (the latter two reviewed on this blog) hearing them on the album, they have lost none of their addictive punch. The band’s music is poppy punk, with attitude in bucketloads. Lyrically, they take aim at several familiar targets – political, royalty, capitalism and such, but in a way that doesn’t make you think, here we go again. Not the same tired & angry over-zealous approach we’ve seen many times before.
The new PM could be the target of All of the Money! None of the Style! mind you so could several thousand others…while his new cabinet are the Henchmen, a song highlighting that ignorance is not an excuse.
The aforementioned EP tracks back up my earlier assertions. Take Henry XXXXXV is a song that highlights the preposterousness of the existence of royalty, with lyrics that don’t take themselves too seriously but still make their point. Want Stuff, Buy Stuff is the musical equivalent of people running around like headless chickens buying shit. While Conspiracy attacks the irrationality of the conspiracy theories that crop up (pun intended) seemingly daily on-line and Radio 1 targets the absurdity of playlists dictating what “your favourite song” is, creating a nation of musical zombies.
The New Stuff
What of Cockwomble’s new songs?
When I was younger, the threat of nuclear war scared the shit out of me, exacerbated by watching a docu-drama called Threads. A song of the same name appears on this album, one of the slower songs on the album. With its bass-line Kim Deal would be proud of, and an intro reminiscent of Carter USM, the song develops into a mutated mix of Pixies, Carter and King Blues. The them plays to some of my real-life closer to home fears as I got older, tackling as it does the subject of mental health.
On the subject of the language of today, two of the phrases the irritate me are gammon and snowflake, as they seem to be thrown about by everyone as insults, without really knowing what they mean In its frantic full on assault, Ali & Victoria share the vocals on Gammon taking another of these 21st Century insults and attacks those who find something to rant against in everything, you know, the Piers Morgan types.
Football analogies abound on the clever witticisms of Britain FC commenting on the current state of our glorious union of nations, “hanging on to past glories” to a gloriously addictive power pop soundtrack. Ramonesy power-pop ends the album on the insightful societal commentary of Better Than You
Ridiculous name? To some, maybe, but whatever you think of the name, get over it, Cockwomble’s debut album is packed with ridiculously catchy poppy power punk to help soundtrack these strange times.