In the war against normality, you have to be prepared for any eventuality. You need camouflage netting and a birdcage with bells on, just in case. You need to wave a huge wooden bust of Tutankhamen above your head. You need to look like you’ve just stepped off a 1982 moon mission after six weeks of no sleep. And you need a uniform. [a]Regular Fries[/a] have a uniform, and they call it Fries Space Military: helmets, hats and jackets adorned with NASA insignia. Of course, it doesn’t make these gym-shy arbiters of spliff-chic appear any different, but it’s a uniform, an attitude. It says something without saying anything. We’re not sure what exactly, but that’s not the point.
With [a]Regular Fries[/a] there’s never been a point, because why attempt to achieve something that’s achievable? Let other people have the ambitions. Let the Fries take it as it comes and see what happens. And they’re doing alright, man: tonight they’re the jesters in the court of King Monkey Ian Brown, a think tank leaking fuzzy logic and impractical ideas, zapping a keen Nottingham crowd with syrupy dub and muddy grooves. Boldly going where quite a few people have gone before actually, but going there in some style.
As rock’s most celebrated [I]flbneurs[/I], what the Fries do musically has always seemed secondary to their plans for interplanetary domination. Now, at least, it shares an equal footing. A year of mid-afternoon festival slots and incessant touring has shaved the flab from their traditionally unfocused sets, and while you’d be hard-pushed to call them tight, they’ve certainly grown into their sound. ‘Dust It’ swaggers with low-slung grace, while ‘King Kong’ and ‘Dream Lottery’ tap into a seam of rich, progressive psychedelia and stretch it over a propulsive shuffle; head music, in the Julian Cope sense.
If to understand [I]Les Frites[/I] we need to really [I]listen [/I]to the music, then the signal we’re receiving is utterly scrambled, shot through with glimpses of genius. New song ‘Fused’, for example, is basically [a]Regular Fries[/a] meets tough house and it’s brilliant, thanks to a huge 4/4 pulse behind it over which the Fries create mucho sonic violence. You can dance to it, you can think to it. And what you think is: now they’re disco apothecaries dispensing dancefloor wisdom and slowly, after two years of never quite making sense, it’s all starting to take shape. All aboard the lunar module then. This could still be some journey.