What makes Bored Housewife great is the way they confront and commentate on real life, the everyday, the humdrum in a way that’s relatable. Ok, so when people say something like ‘The Office’ is ‘funny because it’s true’, they’re talking shit because it’s neither funny nor true, and truth is rarely funny in itself. As such, it’s all in the delivery. It’s the delivery that’s the other thing that makes Bored Housewife great. Chirpy, upbeat, amiable-sounding acoustic folk songs that sound chipper and cuddly are packed with brutal lyrical daggers, and the six-track ‘Bin Hoaker Chronicles’ is seriously spiky.
‘What the fuck am I working for / my job’s a fucking joke / they only pay me minimum wage / I’m always fucking broke’ sing Justin and Meabh liltingly on ‘Laugh Laugh Clap Your Hands’. We’re only 12 seconds into the EP, and already the first sting in the tail’s landed a resounding slap in the face before they get to cataloguing drugs commonly prescribes for anxiety and depression.
‘Think Belle and Sebastian, if they grew up in a Northern Irish council estate wherein they developed an appreciation for the darker things in life,’ says their website. It’s a fair summary: whereas Belle and Sebastian are saccharine sweet and happy-clappy to the core, the sugar coating of Bored Housewife’s ditties is there to mask a fatal dose of Strychnine.
|
The half-developed metaphor I’ve been working on about a silk glove with a knuckle duster hidden beneath becomes literal on ‘You Think You’re Class’, which finds the duo joined here by Rob and Ed Harrington on percussion and lead guitar respectively) explain why they’re not to be messed with: ‘You think you’re class / but I’ve got a baseball bat / and I’m going to teach you a lesson / about fucking me around you twat’ (while smiling through clenched teeth all the while).
Shopping, TV and domestic drudgery are favoured topics, and if folk music was historically a vehicle for voicing dissent, Bored Housewife reclaim the genre from limp-wristed tossers like Mumford and Sons and inject a blend of passion, poison and pessimism, and do so with honest, lo-fi panache.
Bored Housewife Online
|
