The musical identity of Midlands town Stourbridge is largely defined by Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Pop Will Eat Itself and The Wonder Stuff, a trio that charted with varying degrees of wackiness in the late Eighties to mid-Nineties. The Voluntary Butler Scheme, the recording identity of fellow Stourbridgian Rob Jones, shares their leaning towards wackiness, but it’s more surreal, less surface. He’s also way more interesting musically. Second album The Grandad Galaxy is a musical rummage through a jumble-sale mind.
Jones is closer to Davyhulme absurdist Jim Noir than any of his local predecessors. Both he and Noir dig into the day-to-day. Both seamlessly bolt disparate musical styles together. Both like psychedelic layering. The Grandad Galaxy’s opening cut is an instrumental called “Hiring a Car” which sounds like a hyperactive hip-hop overhaul of Sixties television intermission music. On the woozy, Pet Sounds-ish “Astro” he declares, “I wanna live my life on the Moon”. But, he notes, it’s a “long, long way away”. “To the Height of a Frisbee” is melodic pop that could have cropped up at any point from the rock‘n’roll boom on. “Do the Hand Jive” is so catchy it would have been bubblegum in another era. The Voluntary Butler Scheme are a form of hypnagogic pop – where foggily recalled, half-remembered music from the past is recast. Another side of Jones’s sensibility is akin to the British-tea-and-teddy-bears strand of psychedelia.
After Jones was disinterred from MySpace, his ensuing debut single, 2008’s "Trading Things in", ended up on Grey’s Anatomy. The Voluntary Butler Scheme have also been heard on an ad for Dell computers. For all its peculiarity, The Grandad Galaxy will up the attention factor. It’s as irresistible as jam on toast.
Find The Grandad Galaxy on AmazonWatch the video for "Do the Hand Jive"
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