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Fun Anxiety – A condition known to afflict members of rock combination group Kill The Captains, born from a sense that everyone is having fun without them. Symptoms include leaving conversations hanging because your neighbour's conversation sounds more interesting, a pathological refusal to go to bed despite the fact that everyone else went to bed days ago, a phobia of clowns. Related forms: Funmnesia. Hailing from 'the largest village in England' and brought up to work hard and play hard Kill the Captains are an industrious bunch of buxom comrades. By day the band runs its own recording studio and rehearsal facilities, ‘Red Cloud’ and by night they promote their own indie-tastic and very successful club-night, ‘Mutiny’.

Having debuted with their eponymous EP in 2008 and fresh from recent shows with Johnny Foreigner and Acoustic Ladyland, the band has developed into a ferocious live act with a burgeoning reputation for riotous performances. Their debut long-player is steeped in elements of drone rock, new-wave pop, and suspense-filled Rock’n’Roll, with shout-along choruses, fizzing dual-guitars and propulsive rhythmic skulduggery.

"Fun Anxiety" opens with the bestial themed couplet of Santino and Spot the Leopard - the former a true story about a chimpanzee that briefly became a minor scientific phenomenon. It was observed that he gathered objects from within his enclosure in a Swedish zoo, and whittled them into missiles that he could direct at the daily crowds who gawped and pointed. Scientists who studied him professed that his ability to plan demonstrated distinctly human characteristics: he was methodical, he scheduled his attacks, he sought to maximise the deadly potential of his weapons of choice. He was castrated for his initiative. The epic whirr of "The Yellow Brush" and "Missing Canoeist", are seductively dangerous and clearly define the bands shared love of all things shoegaze and krautrock! Where as "Rope" highlights Leon Carter’s intelligent and emotive lyrics accompanied by some beautiful arpeggio guitars - 'Don’t act too smart, don't have an opinion, and don't lift your head above the parapet'.

Recent single "Rummy", is a counter-kilter barn stomper which showcases the band's quintessentially British sense of humour cutting bitter lyrical swathes against the slobbering uber-Neanderthal - 'Came down from the treetops, knuckles still dragging' - the type who steals your wife whilst closing the deal on the insurance you never wanted - 'Learnt a string of pleasantries and never stopped smiling'. Like all great rock stompers it perfectly pairs a classic and memorable melody with foot-tap-inducing scuzzy guitars. "Lebanese" and "Clovers" provide a sonic shoulder to cry on, the audio equivalents of holding your hand and giving you a cuddle. The same could not be said for "House Band At The Asylum", befitting it’s moniker in the nuttiest of fashions. The album scales dizzying proportions on "Cellar Dweller" when a measured sermon in the opening verses soon spills into prophetic declaration and the band unleash the 4 horses of apocalypse, galloping and converging into a crescendos beneath layer upon layer of ever thickening blankets of sound, but what less would you expect from a song written from the perspective of a survivalist ensconced in his underground panic room, ruminating on the impending destruction of the world. Closing with the stunning "Harper's Call", this is the kind of song you imagine couples coming together, gazing at each other adoringly. Management then turn the lights on but the DJ lets it play out. The couples dance. The music ends. Eyes are locked in their embrace.

TRACK LISTING

1. Santino
2. Spot The Leopard
3. Rope
4. The Yellow Brush
5. Dutch Rudder
6. Clovers
7. Missing Canoeist
8. Rummy
9. Lebanese
10. House Band At The Asylum
11. Cellar Dweller
12. Harper's Call