More than 20 years after breaking up, British post-punk weirdos The Deep Freeze Mice return with a retrospective album, the aptly titled The Best of the Deep Freeze Mice, 1979 – 1989. Like a lot of the bands that came out of the musically diverse British post-punk era, their sound is wholly unique, mixing a distinctly English style of guitar-pop that in many respects presages the Britpop movement with psychedelic-influenced, surrealist lyrics, and a ramshackle, punk-rock aesthetic. The new LP features a collection of the ten best of The Deep Freeze Mice songs, as compiled by original guitarist and vocalist Alan Jenkins.
The song they have available for streaming, “Minstrel Radio Yoghurt”, is about as nonsensical as it sounds, with lyrics like “Riding on your pumpkin, I refuse to pay the fair/because riding on your pumpkin takes you nowhere.” and “There are armadillos in here, escaped from Radio 1.” With its jangly acoustic guitar, tight drumming, and high-pitched keyboard, it’s more Kinks than it is Wire, but thanks largely to Alan Jenkins’ shaky and anxious vocal style, it still manages to be just as threatening and unnerving as any other record of its era (in an appropriately polite, British manner, of course).
The Best of the Deep Freeze Mice, 1979-1989 is out now on Night-People.
