monday morning called for something effervescent and upbeat, and the can can e.p. is nothing if not that. i adored this band in their heyday, and i adore this e.p. i've recently been reminded of just how fun it is by its numerous appearances in seasons three to five of outrageous fortune, where they really hammered 'o'baby'. charlie ash have recently rebranded as CASH, and moved to london to record a full length album. they're great girls, who really know how to party (a quality i admire) and i wish them the best of luck. their new musical direction doesn't do it for me as much though. i do enjoy 'come back lover' (see it here) and 'wake up' (which sadly i can't find now) both of which make the most of rosie's lovely voice and indicate a more mature sound, but i was a little sad to hear the once-brilliant 'electro-sexual' reduced to its current form in 'heterosexual'. the can can e.p. is, in my mind, charlie ash at their best. i love these girls; they're very talented and huge fun. so i'm confident they'll surprise me again (this gives me hope, flick to pages 90-91) but for now i prefer to remember them in the heady days of 2007-9; vibrant, energetic, and every so slightly kooky.
the beauty of picking an e.p first up is that it leaves enough time for another album afterwards. i was severely tempted to continue this energised mood with calvin harris' 'i created disco'. in the spirit of musical diversity, however, i instead went with cake's 'fashion nugget'. a more downbeat choice, but nonetheless a good one. the main benefit is that instead of having sickly-synth-pop 'acceptable in the 80s' in my head all day (trust me, that gets old fast) i had the exceptional 'stickshifts and safetybelts'. cake create a fusion of different styles, predominantly the alt-rock of the era but infused with funk, jazz, and other influences to create a sound that is somehow unique and classic at the same time. 'stickshifts and safetybelts' draws heavily on a country influence to create an upbeat yet understated and unlikely love song. cake's offbeat style is excellently showcased in the two covers on this album (gloria gaynor's 1978 hit 'i will survive' and doris day's 'perhaps perhaps perhaps', 1964). with a number of singles which i just this morning realised share the common theme of cars ('the distance', 'race car ya-yas') and others such as 'italian leather sofa' and 'friend is a four letter word' this is just as much an album that speaks of a male mid-life crisis as it does of the teen angst that i read into it when it was first released. an old favourite, very gratefully rediscovered.
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