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Born of the ashes of Fuck Dress, you will not be amazed to hear that Scumbag Philosopher have a bit of a warped sound. Bits of Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club and Adam and the Ants thrown in – it’s 90% attitude and 10% application and this is the way it has to be when you are giving someone a good slagging off via the medium of music. 7/10
Three years ago a group called Fuck Dress came ranting out of Norwich shouting "God is dead so I listen to Radiohead" on their debut single "Suburban Nietzsche Freak". Then they disappeared. Now they have a new name and an eponymous single which contains a reference to the song's protagonist as an "arcade Heidegger" and lasts two minutes and 42 seconds. They still sound like Fall acolytes I Ludicrous but their sense of humour is darker and less mischievous. "Scumbag Philosopher" is a deadpan sneer at anyone old who's ever offered unwanted life advice, choked out over rumbling primitive tribal drone-rock. It's oddly catchy in a playground chant manner, as well as being abrasively belligerent in a way that's invigorating. (THG)
Tune of the Day.
Conceived as a sort of situationist prank by a group of Norfolk based misfits Scumbag Philosopher are a nihilist-baiting mismatch of a crazed girl mauling her two drum kit. a grumbling, misanthropic, borderline aspergers front man and cascading, caterwauling guitars. So there!!
Fairly certain we mentioned this lot in passing via our delayed Xmas missive, used to be Fuck Dress who as you all should recall had of its day (and that year to be honest) in ’suburban Nietzsche freak’ the most important debut on planet pop. There’s an album apparently simmering with ill content entitled ’it means nothing so it means nothing’ due to worry record emporium counters shortly and a second single following this debut and primed for hot pursuit is the impishly titled ’god is dead so I listen to Radiohead’ (a very HMHB title I’m sure you’ll all agree).
And strangely enough the Half Man Half Biscuit references aren’t lost on us for ‘scumbag philosopher’ is pitched with a mischievously impish deadbeat nonchalance that grizzles and gouges away at this their debut outing, framed and coiled by a deep locked grooved twang and cowed by a hitherto quiet menace the Scumbags pitch their tent with an eye for the Fall and an ear for I, ludicrous, heap in some waywardly numbed John Cooper Clarke motifs, add a pinch of the Cravats and the angular poise of a youth Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones and maybe a smidgeon of David Cronenberg’s Wife and you have yourself a decidedly uneasy and wonderfully warping world weary and wired wannabe.