Warning: May Contain Canadians (Bargainville - Moxy Früvous)

Member Name: greenierexyboy

Product:	Bargainville - Moxy Früvous
Date:	26/03/09 (268 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Highly intelligent and tuneful, wonderfully sung

Disadvantages: Sometimes mistakes 'clever - clever' for 'clever'

'Students'. A word that is deeply intertwined with learning and the getting of wisdom, yet still largely used as a term of derision. Why is this?

Well, let's be honest, we all did some semi-daft stuff in higher education. In my case, 'a Computer Science degree': it doesn't get much dafter than that. But there were other, more small-scale acts of pointless futility that 'seemed like a good idea at the time.' Bunking off lectures to go climbing. Bunking off lectures to scare your mates silly on the brink of Beachy Head. Bunking off lectures to go to Alton Towers (which is a bit of a hike from Southampton, if truth be told). Actually, none of those were pointless, because they were fun. And they give the lie to the idea that I never behaved like a student. True, I never wasted my entire grant (I'm old enough to have had a grant) on a DAT recorder (nice one Andy, who I believe is STILL paying that off 15 years later), or stole road signs (and a set of temporary traffic lights), or went walking in the New Forest in the middle of the night (oh, actually I did. Ooops). And I never thought I'd still be able to compete in 'University Challenge' even if I'd already graduated and become an accountant. But I was still as wild and reckless and experimental as everyone else...now stop laughing, before you prolapse a disc or something.

And of course, I did the student 'thing' with music. Getting into stuff for the most tenuous of reasons, acting on the most woolly of recommendations, and generally mistaking 'annoyingly smartarse' for 'really intelligent, deep and meaningful'. But all of this manic eclecticism came in mighty handy when it came to rummaging for something obscurely Canadian to write about. For in 1993, as I tried to complete my 'Fractal Behaviour In Iterative Systems' dissertation/project/whatever, my friend John (who has cost me a bloody fortune in records down the years, and still does) suggested I investigate Moxy Früvous.

Described in their Wikipedia entry as 'a socially conscious and politically satirical folk-pop band', what piqued John's (and later my) liking for them was their somewhat lazy reputation as 'Canada's version of They Might Be Giants'. The Früvous were a brains trust of four buskers who gained a huge word-of-mouth following on the streets of Toronto, which led to attention from a local radio station who commissioned songs for a current affairs show from them. From there their recording career spawned four 'proper' albums, a couple of compilations of ephemera, and a live album that ably captured their highly entertaining stage show. No new material has emerged since 1999, and while the band may not actually be extinct, they may be regarded as pretty definitively dormant.

'Folk-pop' is a semi-accurate banner for them to have sailed under, although their multi-instrumental virtuosity took them many places besides. Their earlier recordings, though polished, did sound essentially 'busked': later on, they weren't above more obvious 'four-piece band' material. One thing did stay consistent though: the singing. The Früvous are one of the most sweetly harmonising bands I have ever heard. Without an obviously delegated lead singer, and with all four members being quite capable of performing a lead vocal, it's no surprise that their oeuvre features a considerable element of acapella.

'Bargainville' was the first full-length LP from the band, after a well-received demo tape. Of their four albums, it's probably the most obviously entertaining, and also the best showcase for both their strengths and their weaknesses. The spectrum of moods covered, from outright comedy (albeit with pathos) to deadly seriousness always kept what was obviously a very talented band from QUITE managing to make a totally coherent and satisfying record. Still, there were considerable pleasures along the way.


1) River Valley - 'Socially conscious' kicks in immediately with this sparse, bassless folk song. But bear in mind this is a social consciousness based on the world of the early 90s (see next song), and its concerns are centred there. Modern living is lightly bemoaned, with particular emphasis on the environment. To quoth:

'Me and Pete went swimming last night, he's my friend from boy scouts
All the fish were floating upright, we got scared, and we got out...'
'Meet me in the river valley, you can tell me stories
'Bout a time before pinstripe suits, dippers, grits, and tories'

If the boy scout references make you feel prickly, I think you might be as well seeking aural pleasure elsewhere: there's a lot of this sort of 'cleverness' on this record. But it's a lovely tune, gorgeously sung.

2) Stuck In The 90s - One of the Früvous's finest recorded moments. Another lament for the artificiality and corruption of modern times (they may be Canadian, but their ire was definitely being lobbed over the 49th Parallel) compared to the (rather rose-tinted, it has to be said) free-spiritedness of the 60s. Folky again, but this time backed by harmonica, accordion and acoustic guitar, it's (and this will become a cliché) sincerely sung in the verses and rapturously harmonised in the choruses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9_avPkF7JA

3) B.J. Don't Cry - 'Never had a girl to call his own...'

The first song where comedy/cleverness is a primary component, and as such likely to be a distinctly polarising experience. Imagine the following lyrics vocalised (rather than sung) in a 'funny' voice:

'From the Früvous Quill comes a sorry tale of love and illin'
Romeo found the balcony too high, ended up with second billin'
She loved in triplicate, left his heart a blank to fill in
Lost his faith immaculate when cupid became a villain'

If this doesn't make you want to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Ontario...then we may have located a new band for you to fall in love with.
(Oh, it has a beautifully harmonised chorus, in case you were wondering).

4) Video Bargainville - A paean to the video rental boom of the 80s and 90s: doesn't that seem so VERY long ago now? Awash with cultural references and performed in a somewhat faux-vaudeville style, this is another one whose potential to annoy is considerable. Personally, I consider it charming, which will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me.

5) Fell In Love - Almost a straight love song, this is the tale of an OCD sufferer (definitely) who becomes involved with a pyromaniac (probably). Despite being unable to resist the odd piece of clever-clogsery ('I was a person who would censor "Pee Wee's Adventure"'), it's done as an understated acoustic folk ballad and is utterly, utterly gorgeous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoiY-ottNPs

6) The Lazy Boy - Almost acapella (there's a bit of percussion, but nothing else), this track pretty much walks into the holding tank marked 'satirical comedy song, probably written for a radio show' with its hands up. A very funny dissection of a particular type of TV consuming American, it would seem totally rooted in its time but for the fact that there are even more of these people these days than there were when it was written. In an alternate universe, an ideal theme tune for the Jerry Springer Show.

7) My Baby Loves A Bunch Of Authors - Bordering scarily on skiffle, this song was written for a Toronto Authors festival. You can imagine the brief: 'can you guys do a clever song about authors, please?' Very entertaining, with some incredible wordplay going on, it does however suffer from the usual drawback of musical comedy: its ability to stand up to repeated listening is debateable, to say the least. Still, a song that rhymes 'ouzo' with 'Mario Puzo' is pretty much guaranteed to elicit a chuckle or two.

8) The Drinking Song - And after two slices of Radio Four-esque comedy, this is a sudden lurch into melancholy. Both a song about two buddies concertedly attempting (and one of them succeeding) to drink themselves to death while indulging in some Grade-A denial, and a use of that scenario as a metaphor for mankind's ability to persist in doing the wrong thing until it's probably too late, its dark subject matter and treatment (a very subdued accordion and guitar provide the only backing) are probably too big a stylistic lurch. From hereon in the album is a far more variable proposition.

9) Morphée - Most Früvous albums contained a song sung in French, and this is Bargainville's example. A pretty, delicate acoustic ballad, it has to be said that its being in French is comfortably the most memorable thing about it.

10) King Of Spain - There's no getting away from it: this song relates the tale of the King Of Spain, and how he decided to step away from his royal duties, replace himself with a double, and go and work in a pizza joint. You know, like you do. It's a pure piece of entertainment, great with children (I know this from experimentation), and with a very limited shelf life. Another song with purely percussive backing, it is also, slightly inexplicably, the band's most famous song.

11) Darlington Darling - Another story song with a muted acoustic guitar and a jaunty accordion, we are introduced to a boy who works on a car production line, dreaming of being able to afford to buy one of the automobiles on which he installs the spark plugs and distributor cap, because it would symbolise a better life for himself and his girlfriend. Both uptempo yet strangely wistful, and one of the highlights of what would have been Side Two...y'know, back in my day.

'In Darlington lies my darling one, she fills my thoughts each day,
Half a mile from the cooling towers, I sure hope that she's ok'

12) Bittersweet - Almost freeform, slightly bluesy busked moodiness: a rumination on a more generic version of modern life that's quite engaging when it's on, but all too easily forgotten once it isn't. I think it weaves in references to the first Gulf War (see later) and the worryingly godlike power of television, but alas fails to make them stick.

13) Laika -

'When I was 3, my mother said to me
Eat up your greens and say your grace
While on TV they put a dog in space
And left her there... you shoulda seen her face...'

Laika was the poor dog sacrificed on Sputnik 2 to help determine if a human being could survive being put into orbit: quite possibly the most famous real canine in history (well, I own three songs about her by different artistes: no other mutt makes it past one). She's the starting point here for the tale of a little boy who buries himself in the space race of the 50s and 60s to escape the mundanity of his everyday life. Slightly musically abstract by Früvous standards, its smartness is still rather winning.

14) Spiderman - Both a cover and an elaboration (i.e. with jokey lyrics) upon the Spiderman theme, and therefore obviously one of the more throwaway numbers. Again, almost acapella save for some percussion, and the sort of thing that would most certainly force a donation if you caught it being busked in the street. But, once more, not a track with obvious durability.

15) Gulf War Song - 'We'd like to play hockey, have kids and grow old...'

Finally, a totally acapella song. Written for the radio show, it uses the first Gulf War as a template for a contemplation of man's total inability to allow his fellow man to hold a differing point of view. Very clever, highly poetic, and sung like a choir of angels.


The Früvous, being fortunate enough to be around at a time where being loved by students the world over was enough to make a living, would ease off on the comedy while amplifying the melancholy on the often stunning 'Wood' (1995), went back to the grab-bag of comedy and social comment on the patchy but excellent 'You Will Go To The Moon' (1997), before recording their (at the time of writing) last and most 'mature' release 'Thornhill' (1999).
As I intimated earlier, none of the Früvous's albums are classics: they're far too all over the place for that (I often used to speculate as to how good 'Bargainville' might have been with a different track sequence, before I realised that the problem is that Side One is the first side of a properly good album, and Side Two is the kind of conglomerate eclecticism you'd expect from a B-sides compilation), but all of them have a better than 50% strike rate.

And (for me, at least), they hint back to a time when something non-self-consciously quirky might have had some commercial mileage in it. A time when a bunch of politically motivated buskers from Canada (one of whom was Iranian! They'd be shot rather than signed in this day and age) could put out a bunch of albums on Atlantic and Warner Bros Records. A time when you were allowed to rhyme 'Who's a funny fella?' with 'W.P.Kinsella!' Wasn't it better then?

To my growing horror, I realise it just might be that I miss being a student.

I think I should go and lie down.

Summary: The best bunch of Canadian buskers you never heard of