Grand Wheat Something Opus

Emergency Ladder

Ripped Disks
Released carefully in the hopes that no-one will notice, with the result that everyone notices and knows it's you

Review by Mr Matchstick

Emergency Ladder's fourth album comes to us with the blessing of no less a person than Norris McWhirter, the first time such a thing has occurred since his endorsement of I Just Can't Get Enough during the heyday of Depeche Mode. The album contains few real surprises and is comfortable like a well-used whore.

Cleft Tooley's lyrics cover well trodden ground: alcohol soaked affairs, chloroform soaked rags, petty crime, crimey pets, and the paradox of Zeno's arrow. However they go beyond cliché and are more like Jungian archetypes of songs of their typecast.

The band's sound is perhaps most defined by the basket-weaving of Terrence Ploog. Ploog's work is outstanding and is undoubtedly the best of it's kind since Erik Productionline's seminal live album, Potato Wedge Soop Bar. In particular the Beatles-esque Oasis pastiche Put Down The Marmoset, John echoes back to that performance, especially since the bassoon riff is performed by Egmont Feebleplop, who older readers will recall from the famous Paris Slalom night-club incident (Feebleplop was compelled by a local bylaw to provide oral sex to Productionline after the two were arrested at the club for mocking the French word for ski wax in front of Charles Asnavour). Sadly this is the only track on which Feebleplop features.

Tooley's vocal talents combine with Ploog's rafia to haunting effect on the track Only Coffeemate Believe. I have heard the track several times now and still wake up screaming.

Like Erik Productionline, this album leaves a salty taste in the mouth.