Howling Gruel - Jolly Jape LP (Wormwood Grasshopper, 2015)
"RECOMMENDED: The products of the Wormwood Grasshopper label are centered around one key approach to musicmaking: that of instability, in all its quivering wobble. Howling Gruel continues a product lineage back to two earlier Tasmanian bands in the Grasshopper fam, Hammering The Cramps and Drunk Elk. The former shook a ‘90s zine-cultured psychedelic rock sound until it broke; the latter played a dramatic flail with its backs turned. Howling Gruel seems immediately more confident than those acts, now charging a poppier, hook-oriented sound from deliriously incorrect angles. Instrumentation is guitar, drums, and a synthesizer that at sounds like it’s been called back into service from a previous life as a apartment buzzer or maybe a Morse code transmitter, and might as well be played when the musician touches two exposed wires together. The intermittent buzz of this instrument, and the uncertain style in which the vocals are delivered act as a treatment to otherwise steady-enough rock riffs and competent drumming, an inflection point between Marvin the Martian and if you left Mayo Thompson sitting out in the sun for too long. Moreover, Howling Gruel’s songs seem to impress upon themselves the existence of other songs, perhaps opening up a new chapter on outsider fandom – opener “The Last Will And Testament Of Alphonso Artemis” is an enthusiastically shambled ringer for Pavement’s “Box Elder,” while “Mallard Spring” holds onto the opening passage from The Beatles’ “Get Back” (maybe not so mistakenly, the group replaces “back” with “quack”). The tracks on side B seem to be working through more of a process, starting with the glorious puddle “Vladimir Investigates” and building into the marathon pummel of the Mudhutters-esque “Just Like Honey Pt. 2.” There hasn’t been a record so eager to transcend its own language, or so ready to annoy in as cheerful a manner as you’d ever want in some time, but for those of you with any sort of fight left in your manicured tastes, Howling Gruel are ready to deliver a painful itch someplace you can’t reach." - Doug Mosurock (Still Single)