- I never really expected to see this album. Sure, Sticky Fingers have always sounded highly accomplished, whenever they would shoot through a random mp3 with little or no fanfare. I'd think, "that sounds great" and then six months would go by, nothing happening and you'd assume they'd packed up their instruments and gone to work at the bank.
Not so! In the mail the other day, all spattered with brightly coloured cartoons and clad in a stylish cardboard slip, Sticky Fingers finally gave us their music in a package as efficient and aesthetically pleasing as the music itself.
If you haven't heard that music before, it's a rather unusual blending of dub-reggae with a dreamy indie-rock-pop, the amalgam of which is very smooth and would enable them to please a crowd of young, female admirers. It's strange, listening to it album length, it's almost too smooth and lady pleasing for my tastes, whatever those hordes of girls might think. The lyrics are decidedly lurid at points, too, which I don't usually have a problem with, but when coupled (no pun intended) with such pop crispness, they seem all the more obscene.
Whenever I'm not having an attack of latent prudishness I find the songwriting and musical skills these lads bring quite undeniable. A number like Clouds & Cream is pitch-perfect reggae-pop; the lyrics are surreal as all get out, occasionally a bit distrubing and again, quite pervy, but whatever, when the songwriting is this good, you can ramble on about what you like.
I always thought that Sticky Fingers should be selling-out shows around the country, which is apparently exactly what they were doing at the end of 2012. Now the only thing which doesn't quite gel is releasing this monster so obviously full of summer hit potential just as we're putting on our cardies for Autumn. Oh well, I think Sticky Fingers may just be appealing enough to get people into the combie and back down the beach one last time.
- Chris Cobcroft.