On first listen to this new EP from CELEBRATION, ‘War’ (released on 4AD) I was a bit confused, a bit scared, a bit confounded, a bit intrigued, and a bit won over, you get the idea. They are definitely an acquired taste. I recall the first time I ate olives, thinking they were gross, and now I can’t get enough of them. It’s a good analogy of how I feel towards Celebration.
This Baltimore 3-piece have built a dedicated fan base by performing their erotically charged, surreal, twisted circus, Krautrock-rumba-punk to crowds of stunned onlookers. It’s punk, indie and Hammer Horror all rolled into one. Like listening to a Salvador Dali painting, if you see what I mean.
“War” is a demented punch in the head, you can see in your minds eye the band members gleefully whizzing around on stage, wearing voodoo attire and rams heads. You can’t tell what they’re singing about, but it doesn’t matter cause the little darlings have strapped you into the rollercoaster ride to Hell and it doesn’t look like there’s any going back.
The B-side “Run Away” sounds like a solemn death march taken through a haunted housing estate, with the muzak kitschy Hammonds, creepy vibraphones whirling away to dizzying effect and Katrina Ford’s weird and unearthly vocals sounding incredibly beautiful, yet (almost morally) wrong. Like the point in a horror film where the hero is snogging some gorgeous blonde, only to realise that she’s actually a blood leeching, shape shifting alien who is going to suck his brain out through a straw.
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Celebration certainly aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but the fact that they seem to be freaking all and sundry right out is not a bad thing. I reckon that rather than a musical anomaly, signed purely for their sense of quirk, this band will manage to terrify the living daylights into our lives, and I imagine we’ll see a lot more of these in the near future, along with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and their accompanying troops of the undead.
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