Don’t let the name fool you, Limbs aren’t out to tear you apart. Their off-kilter brand of experimental rock claims influence from other oddballs such as Tom Waits and The Divine Comedy, and the latest example of this quirkiness is in their new EP Mankind.
From the off, you immediately get that strange sort of psychedelic vibe from their piano driven sound. It’s clear that aside from the weirder side of the music spectrum, they’re also taking a fair amount from The Beatles, something that comes off quite strong on “Mr Monk E Moo”, perhaps crossed with Sean Lennon’s more zany works (such as in The Claypool-Lennon Delirium). Opener “Boom Boom Boom” shifts from movement to movement, and by the 4 minute mark you feel like you’re listening to an entirely different song. In this respect, it certainly harks back to the progressive punk weirdness of cult group Cardiacs, whose early output (especially around the time of A Little Man and a House and the Whole World Window) was full of these unexpected tangents.
Once you reach “The Atom Song”, you don’t really know what to expect anymore. Taking an almost entirely piano driven approach, “The Atom Song” starts off as a slow burner, going theatrical for a brief spell, before turning into something you’d hear in a perfume advert and then back again. It remains in the restrictions of your basic piano song but still tries to bend the rules of song structure as much as it can. However, some moments sound almost like the sort of thing you’d hear in an amateur dramatics production, with the monologues of the title track “Mankind” almost screaming for an incredibly cheesy dance number to accompany it. Something like that feels incredibly out of place and is perhaps one of the experiments that haven’t really worked for Michael Chadwick and co. but nobody can say that they’ve struck gold without having to plough through a lot of mud first. As someone with a profound dislike for the ukulele, I almost found myself docking points for that too, but the song it was used in, “Minor Hit”, returns to form before I could really see it as a problem.
With such a disregard for genre conventions, it’s hard to find a place where Limbs can fit in. It’s very likely that they’ll be welcomed with open arms by the fanbases of Cardiacs and Knifeworld if they continue on the sort of road that “Boom Boom Boom” carved out for them. As an entirely home-produced recording, it’s clear they have the resources available to them to put out quality material without having to make any compromises in order to earn funding, but this lack of compromise has led to them lacking anything consistent to tie them down with. It’s worth keeping an eye on though, because the world always needs more eccentricity.
Stream Mankind below and download it for free/pay what you want.