The Foxymorons "Bible Stories"

Independent, 2010

On the seventh day God created Indie-Rock (and it was good)

• It’s easy to hear why Pavement crop up when talking about Foxymorons, everyone has at least heard of them (Pavement that is) if not actually heard them. So you can take ‘Skinny Cow Blues’ as an example, there’s the title, the lyrics, the vocal phrasing, the ramshackle guitar solo and that seemingly accidental grasp of what makes a song work. A lot of people miss or dismiss that essential skill of Pavement, it sounds like it is so easy to do things slightly wrong so that it sounds better then it would if it were right. It takes guts and it takes wiles, Foxymorons have both and an encyclopaedic knowledge of Indie-Rock.

• The smarts allows them not to be tied down easily, ‘This Too Shall Pass’ mixes soft rock with Fleet Foxes style harmonies.  ‘Say It Loud’ bursts into life like a Buffalo Tom song. Their stylistic shifts do lead one into just spotting the quotations and connections, it becomes an end in itself, I can even hear the Monochrome Set in ‘We All Crawl’ which probably reveals more about me than the Foxymorons. But then this is self-referential music about music so it’s not totally unfair to pin ‘Sick of California’ as Granddaddy. For those like myself who found their musical identity through Pavement, Dinosaur Jr in those halcyon times before major label feeding frenzies when ‘This Band Could Be Your Life’ was a life this record lights little Proustian beacons, those fading synapses suddenly fire again. I know what I’m going to be doing tonight, it will involve the Volcano Suns and maybe some Big Dipper, it will be loud. So thanks to the Foxymorons for returning me to the lessons I learned in the old testament of my personal musical bible.