Review: Dead Shed Jokers – Dead Shed Jokers

‘Dead Shed Jokers are dead set rockers, and that is the worst play on a band’s name that I have committed to type so far. I can only apologise to everyone involved in reading that.’

It’s been three months since I wrote that, and I still stand by it being the worst play on a band’s name I’ve committed to type. Now, this might mean I’ve improved since then, or it might mean I’m as exactly as bad as ever and it’s just that I’ve not done much of anything since then to improve or outdo myself. I refuse to make a further attempt at play on Dead Shed Jokers’ name, lest I incriminate myself further. However, I’ll tell you who has improved since then, Dead Shed Jokers.

The South Wales Jokers first appeared on CULTURED VULTURES in a PREVIOUS EDITION of PULSE: NEW MUSIC YOU NEED, where they made an impact with their scuzzy psychedelia that called to mind the likes of Queens of the Stone Age and Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster alongside a touch of a noisier variant of the kind of garage that The Vines put out, and The Strokes too, when they were feeling weird. This, of course, all stemmed from what was out there at the time – mainly their debut album Peyote Smile.

However, this, their second album, seems appropriately self-titled as the band seem to have consolidated all their influences, interests, and inspirations accordingly, and distilled a sound that is wholly their own and fully formed as such, having taken a stride of a step forward progressively. It’s all still here mind, it’s just harder, better, faster, stronger, as well as slower and heavier. ‘Dafydd’s Song’ quite physically kick starts the album with a steel-toe-capped boot of a riff’n’stomp that’s got that thick and fuzzy stoner groove as well as a cock-swinging rock’n’roll swagger to it, before stripping down into something a bit more spacious. It’s a track that’s more than happy to bounce around in its elements, stop-starting its tension and release regularly.

The opening track’s jumping around in sound is a common thread throughout the album, and I’m not just talking Hywel’s impressively unpredictable and unstable approach to vocal delivery, but the eclecticism of the album as a whole; ‘Delay the Morning’ comes across as a prickly and spindly spot of indie as played by angry spiders; ‘A Cautionary Tale’ first floats adrift the winds of Jethro Tull and a chilled out King Crimson before it’s jump-started by a Mars Volta/Queens of the Stone Age mash up riff then spends the rest of its duration duelling with itself; ‘Memoirs of Mr Bryant’ can pride itself on boasting the nastiest riffs of the album after an initially brooding beginning erupts into clashing fat-bottomed grooves and wiry leads alongside plenty of strut and fleeting atmospheric eeriness; ‘Made in Vietnam’ is loud/quiet rock or perhaps more accurately colossal/crazy monster rock; ‘Love is Diseased’ is an evolutionary track slowly building and battling with the disease through completely contrasting passages that somehow flow seamlessly into one another; ‘Rapture Riddles’ manages the unconceivable feat of starting out like NWOBHM/funk before busting into a straightforward rocker, if by straightforward rocker you mean there’s a new riff every few seconds, a space rock passage and a Thin Lizzy playing math rock lead guitar wig out.

And then, as if to slap you gently in the face with a pretty flower of surprise, ‘Exit Stage Left (Applause)’ completely strips it all away and sways, comfortably numb, along to a piano-lead, almost-ballad that’s as much a waltzing slow-dance as it is a downbeat, yet content, number in a musical. On an album chock-a-block with curveballs, Dead Shed Jokers saved their curviest ball for last, and it’s the only way they could possibly have ended it. It’s a topsy-turvy world is the world of Dead Shed Jokers, but it’s a world you’ll want to keep inhabiting.