We're just far too unreliable to do 'Single of the Week' type features every week, but if we did then the brand new single (out today) from 'Strangers on a Train' would easily be the stand out track for this week (and even the month). With an extraordinary mix of cabaret, rock, folk and the odd drunken pirate tale, they're another band we haven't featured before, but in fairness to us they haven't released any new material for 3 years since their debut album 'The Doghouse Suite', which is your compulsory homework for this weekend - it's a riotous and highly entertaining glimpse into an old style shabby brothel where death lurks in every corner.
Anyway.... whilst 'The Doghouse Suite' is pretty enjoyable stuff, the new single 'Baby I'm the Devil' quite simply blows it out the water. Mixing a quite brilliant sea shanty style piano with dark vocals and lyrics, this is described as a 'perverted victory hymn sung by the devil', and they pull it off pretty spectacularly. I love the contributions from trombone and piano, and for regular readers the whole effect is somewhere in the musical void between Danish / Iranian band 'Black Dog Howl' and Major Parkinson's 'Heart of Hickory' song. If there was an advertising agency in existence purely for the purposes of marketing 'the end of the world' then 'Strangers on a Train' would be my choice to run it.
'Baby I'm the Devil' will definitely make you dance through the rest of Friday:
The new 'Strangers on a Train' album is appropriately entitled 'The End is Nigh but the Night is Young”, and will be released through the particularly excellent Celebration Records on November 30th.