Personally, my favourite bits of any newspaper are the side bars with the odd stories that would never make the front pages. They may be viewed as mere filler by the average editor, but they nonetheless offer the most unlikely insights into the world around us.
The news digest in a mid-week copy of the Irish Examiner threw up one of the most bizarre stories I've come across in recent times. Complete with a small photo caption, it highlighted a curious wildlife-related problem in the swampy Everglades of Florida. As a result of some careless owners, a number of Burmese pythons had been let loose in the area and proceeded to multiply in alarming numbers, resulting in a glut of large snakes quickly adapting to their new surroundings until one day when a grown python espied a young alligator and thought "dinner". The youthful 'gator saw the python, also thought "mmm, tasty snack" and a weird clash of the titans ensued. The snake attempted to consume the alligator whole, succeeded in suffocating the 'gator to death, but - literally - exploded in the process. The macabre photo of the remains of the two intertwined carcasses provided one of the most bizarre sights you could imagine.
Quite rightly, you may well wonder what in sod's name this has to do with fearless young London noisenik popsters TEST ICICLES. But hold your horses: for one thing, ver Testies have a song called - appropriately - "Boa vs.Python" about a similar clash of the reptilian titans. Musically, it's an equally uneven melange of cheap, B-movie keyboards, grinding riffs, hi-hat riding disco drums and disconnected, "Junkyard"-era Nick Cave vocals. It's a captivatingly livid sonic mess, but crucially is gripping and convincing enough to end without TOO many brains and tissues ending up floating forgotten in some swampy backwater.
And, while feverish, anything-goes sonic pick'n'mixers TEST ICICLES' debut album "For Screening Purposes Only" sometimes veers towards a few equally horrific sonic pile-ups, for the most part it showcases a band dedicated to ripping up the rule book and blamming out a bunch of catchy-but-visceral choons with a healthy disregard for whichever way the Zeitgeist sirocco may be blowing.
Yes, it does veer within foot-shooting difference at times. Opener "Your Biggest Mistake", for example. sounds like the most apposite of titles as the Testies make like they can't decide whether to be the Fire Engines or Slayer, while Sam Merrann's, er, vocals sound more like a stoat being spayed than a charismatic young indie vocalist on top form. The disposable, heart-racing hardcore poonk of "Catch It", meanwhile, is equally irritating and only marginally less painful than piles and the only intrigue that comes with it is wondering whether the title refers to the clap or Bird Flu.
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Thankfully, they rein in the worst of the excesses and make a case for themselves as a bunch of incendiary young critters the rest of the time. Not to mention ones who can actually grasp structure and dynamics when they so choose. "Pull The Lever" is an early example of this, where the Testies show they can throw mean reserves of art-rock weight around and utilise cheap, 'Scooby Doo' keyboards to boot. Then there's "Snowball" - where Sam hollers his throat raw, the band add some great "hey hey!"s and throw some attractive Fall-meets-Beefheart shapes around a dummy-selling drumbeat - and "Dancing On Pegs" wherein the riffs are catchier than a rusty spike between the eyes and the whole band sound tighter than a glassblower's cheeks.
All good stuff, and on "Circle.Square.Triangle" and "Sharks" they go one better and threaten (the crazy fools) to write the kind of songs that could even score surprise hits in these angular, post-punk-revisited times. The former has all the requisite Andy-Gill-guest-with-Franz edge and finds Merrann actually singing rather than squealing like his nuts are in a mangle, while "Sharks" is more energetic than a stolen Transit van of Mexican jumping beans and mey just be the best song about scary aquatic predators since Morphine's "Sharks Patrol These Waters." So there.
Granted it's often somewhat less than pretty (the delicately-monikered "All You Need Is Blood" might have been a better album title on balance), but as gory'n'gleeful statements of warped pop intent go, "For Screening Purproses Only" makes for rivetting listening and leaves you hanging in the jaws of both death and glory until the next maddeningly brilliant instalment ricochets around.
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