Navvy
Idyll Intangible
101 Distribution
By Jose Fritz
Navvy is a noun, it means menial laborer. It’s pronounced “navi” as it’s an abbreviation of navigator. It’s those crazy Welsh that insist on spelling everything with the extra V and Y. If you doubt me in the slightest please remember that Navvy is from Sheffield, home of the OED itself. The OED sadly makes no reference to New Wave under the entry.
I searched the record fore and aft for a moment of seriousness and found nothing. I am reminded substantively of bands like They Might Be Giants, King Missile, and even Devo. They are technically very capable but apparently know better than to take themselves seriously. The single “Disco” is by far the most danceable cut but also somewhat out of place for those 2 minutes and 49 seconds we spend in Yamaha keyboard purgatory.
Navvy take a strange naiveté, a child-like concept of melody, and then misuse it in the naughtiest of ways. It’s manipulative, almost subversive the way it lures you in. “French Spines” starts out with wooden blocks playing a kooky pattern that might have been lifted from a 1960s recording of Peter and the Wolf. But slowly the song wanders away from that innocent opening into a series of changes and unexpected Devo-ish approach to rock. It’s not impossible to imagine. This is, after all, the homeland of The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.
And speaking of The aforementioned Bonzos, let us remind ourselves that Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band was mental. But then Phil Spector was also mad as a hatter. The argument can be made that Gary Numan was a bit nutty and there wasn’t anything exactly reassuringly emotionally stable about Devo. Other than nutbars what are they? They rock. Our greatest artists have always been degenerates, wackos, drug-addled shut-ins and loons.
Navvy, while clearly as loony as the above, are new the world and unproven. They’re a four-piece pop band with severe electro-pop tendencies. It’s a great place to start. They lean more toward Polysics than Ladytron. Which is to say that they’re more zany, less brainy. Their first release 4-songs came out last year. It was far more garage than new wave probably owing to the hands of producer Alan using an array of vintage synthesizers and an assortment of percussion gear.
They’ve become less synth and more punk in the short gap between. The vocals eerily remind me of David Henderson from the Fire Engines another under-rated British punk band. Which just makes it all the more a pity that John Peel is dead. Long live the king.
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