CASA - the contemporary a cappella society - Review: House Jacks' "Fitchy & Grikko"

Review: House Jacks' "Fitchy & Grikko"

Written by Sean Dargie

Saturday, 03 December 2005

“Fitchy & Grikko”, The House Jacks latest album, is a mix of the ridiculous and rational; a surreal tongue-in-cheek exploration of sounds and textures. Think “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” meets “Barnum and Bailey Circus”.

For those versed in House Jack literature, “Fitchy & Grikko” has the raw energetic sound of “Naked Noise” and the skilled textures and studio glimmer of “Unbroken”. What this means is that there is a feeling of stepping forward and backward at the same time. Songs like “Light of Stars” gave me goosebumps from the twinkling background and the subtle exploration of simple rhythms and harmonies while the use of the syllable “bshh” for a distorted guitar at the beginning of “Take It” made me say, “Huh? Isn’t this beneath them?” Then the album finishes off with a song about “Cereal” singing lines like “milk is good, milk is good food” which made ask, “what just happened?” after the first few listens.

Confused? That’s sort of the idea. Try to follow me here. I realized that I was listening to this album like Mike TV in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” with an attitude of “This is stupid! There’s no point!” The trick is to listen like Charlie would; “It’s candy. There doesn’t have to be a point.” When we go to the circus we throw analysis to the wind and just blindly accept that a midget being fired out of a cannon by the bearded lady into the open mouth of a tiger balancing on the shoulders of a grizzly bear juggling flaming duck pins on a unicycle makes perfect sense. The House Jacks force us to adopt this attitude by keeping us guessing until we just sit back and listen. Once we are able to make that switch, the album starts to shine.

Whatever your impressions of the album, there is no denying that “Fitchy & Grikko” is fun to listen to, if a little confusing at first.