KickBoy - Ick Boy EP Review

KickBoy are a unit, an example of what good can come of home-made DIY creativity between friends for no other means than heart.

Bristol, 2019. Bassist, writer and singer Jamie, drummer Owen and guitarist and synth player Chris splutter out some questionable garage rock and skate punk. London, a little later: the fertilisation of tenuous links to vocalist, guitarist and synth player Jules and saxophonist Connie, and here we have it: KickBoy, a self-professed ‘disco/funk-influenced egg-punk/garage-rock’ band. Their first EP ‘Ick boy’ showcases six cartwheeling, mischievous songs, none of which sound the same but all of which are firey, fun and essential in a scene quickly becoming stale.

Ick Boy, the bashful, bold opener is a nugget of skit gold; here we have ‘icks’ ticked off in self-administered disgust, a hilarious congeries delivered like a stand-up set. From photo-realistic Disney tattoos to podcast humour, commute line chat to t-t-t-tories, and a character who complains that ‘girls don’t believe me when I say I’m six feet tall, but really I’m 5 foot 11 and 3/4 s’, the song immediately bulldozes any false pretences. This EP exists in a time and space most of us can instantly relate to. A rumination on the consumption of art almost inaudible beneath a charged, bass-filled bass and the song rounds off that it, itself, is an ick.  

Next is Suckin Ya Shoe, (or ‘burn down Primark’ if the band wanted a lawsuit on their hands). In harkening back to the pseudo-glory of the boomer years, the five-piece explore the impact of corporations on modern life whilst futuristic synth warbles and impressive drumming patterns thrum on. In the slick and layered bridge, different contrapuntal melodies tease each other and dip in and out of focus like the edges of the oft sighted mosh pits at their live shows.

The EP’s standout is nestled half-way through; Vision Shakes opens with vocal echoes that sound somewhat like experimental-rock band ‘Mary in the Junkyard; the juxtaposition between the two vocal personalities is exacerbated in some demonic-angelic show-off, exploring mental health and depicting rampant disassociation. Behind the pummelling athleticism of the music, it is indeed easy for the band to ‘disappear’. Again, the music meets the promises the lyrics make. It’s somehow both ridiculous and genius.

Anxious Party People takes the nonchalant misdemeanour and no-fucks-given attitude of the London music scene and flips it on its head, fleshes out the human through the carnival – we’re all just anxious party people. The band muse on the polarising individuation of late-stage capitalism as well as the inexorable hierarchy between crowd and artist, both in the sense of streaming – when the musician speaks, when can the listener speak back? or at least maintain some visibility? – and in the neck-craning hostility of small-to-medium size gigs. Get yourself to a KickBoy show and you’ll see the band slipping in and out of the crowd to pass a cow bell around and jive along with the sweaty front-rowers, whilst the remaining members on stage jab home-made posters in the air.

The final song, Eat My Soul! Steal My Hands! takes the central London salary men and the pretentious punk-rock performers at a show in Soho and explores further how the wills of corporate giants infiltrate the things that we love. It’s a dramatic, visual end. The band have referenced the likes of The B-52’s, Parquet Courts and The Garden as key influences. Yet, there’s no mistaking that this is a London record – in moments of retreat we might hear echoes of Fat White Family, or in the brittle bass some Opus Kink. More still, the band barrel against the unsolicited announcement of tube routes, the odd sock smell in Brixton’s the Windmill. Up North, the fizzing anecdotes may fall slightly flat.

However, this scene, set up by flavours of chatty excess like Dry Cleaning, Squid and Sorry, has recently veered into non-consensual stream-of-consciousness, leaning perilously towards pretentious high-art, art-deco, alt-rock. KickBoy sit in the middle, re-affirming what music should be: accessible, relatable, fun, messy, elastic, loopy. The music isn’t of unbelievable dexterity, but that’s the point – it’s rounded as a spoon to dish out healthily at a dinner table, not sharpened as a knife to slice taste hegemonically.

Good music is good, bad music is bad, Jamie mocks in Ick Boy. It’s meant to be obvious that this trifling narrator is the butt of the joke, but KickBoy show us that this it isn’t as clear as it seems – these farcical aphorisms have somehow become common misconceptions. Increasingly, this scene becomes more stand-offish, charged with less movement and more judgement. Refreshingly, then, there’s a sense in this EP that music is important exactly because it’s more than music – it’s creativity, expression, embodiment. KickBoy are a unit, an example of what good can come of home-made DIY creativity between friends for no other means than heart, like sending poetry only to your mum and calling yourself a poet. It’s innovative and crazy, but it’s also entirely necessary.