Here’s a British band whose recorded output almost remained in the vaults, and if you’re an addict of what they call “the thinking men’s pop”, in that case you would never forgive the ones who knew about it.
Taking the imaginative, quirky musical approaches of XTC, Todd’s Utopia or Jellyfish, Cheese doesn’t let anything sound ordinary.
Usually, this kind of a concept is profoundly commercialised with BIG choruses like in the opener Popular Music or the “crowded” All The Time In The World, or it’s just “plain” melody eruption, full of powerful Utopia/Nazz moments, intervened with all of the “cheap tricks” to get your attention, like in Unhinged Melody, Everybody’s Gone or the Big Hit (that never was, unfortunately).
Among all these power-chords, there are also some gentler pieces like the psych-pop sound of Late, combined with some Paddy McAloon-sophistication, then the Macca-on-acid-kinda-XTC-sound of Where Are They Now? or another one, this time told with a bit straighter, Paulanguage, called Meaningful Meaningless as well as the Jellyfishin’ arrangement coupled with some acoustic backed choirboy harmonies in the “two for one” structure of He’s Hardly Officer Material/All Change.
I’m sure that after hearing this album, I won’t have to say “cheese”, cuz it’s gonna bring smiles on your faces anyway.
[Released by Pink Hedgehog 2001]
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