Fox Pop

2020 release. Since writing the last Sergeant Buzfuz album, 2015's Balloons For Thin Linda, songwriter Joe Murphy has lost both parents, got married, been a victim of a smear campaign (as a whistleblowing union rep), co-founded charity QQF (a theatre company for adults with special needs) and relocated to his native Sheffield. Joe has also continued to co-run Blang, the DIT label he started in 2005 and has worked part-time in special needs schools in London and Sheffield to fund the recording of Fox Pop, the seventh Buzfuz album. It's got tunes bursting out all over the place, lyrics from the head, heart and fist and is rich in variety with two-minute pop songs, ballads, post-punk, freakbeat and strands of the band's Celtic DNA. Opening track 'There's Idiots, Then There's Idiots With Money' is a stomping working class anthem that quickly gets under the skin with intricately woven shuffling guitars and percussion that make way for a psychedelic flute solo. 'Fill In The Blanks' and 'Rear View Mirror' are other great moments of raw and instantly familiar catchy classic punk on this album which celebrates real lives and real musicianship through the band's own unique lens. The album, with it's Squeeze & Kinks like anti-folk chant singalongs and storytelling is a perfectly crafted antidote to chart pop, Brexit and the current state of the world. It's fun and meaningful and a constantly surprising delight from this band who are well sewn into the fabric of the UK music scene.