This is a great record – and I didn’t expect it to be. Here’s the thing, I’m a huge, huge The Get Up Kids fan. And at the time I started heavily getting into them my friend played me some Koufax and I just didn’t get it. I didn’t feel it at all. Maybe that was my 18-year-old self just rejecting something a bit more mature than me, I don’t know. But that sole meeting with the band has always stopped me from taking our relationship any further. I dismissed all their stuff without really taking it in. Y’know, just because they weren’t as good as The Kids.
Things have changed and when the good folk at Doghouse sent me ‘Strugglers’ to review I gave it a spin with low expectations and have been floored. This is really good stuff. It mixes some kooky instrumentation with the jangly indie pop of a Hot Hot Heat. It’s both accessible and a bit weird at the same time. But it’s a clever record in that sense as it gets deep inside your brain and hooks you in without you really knowing. I dare you not to tap along to ‘Once In A While’ or the decidedly strange ‘Facsimile’.
There’s still plenty of keys or organ or whatever that instrument is and it’s never better than on ‘Drivers’. Robert’s vocals excel throughout anyway, but on this song, and on the stomping ‘What We Call Flats‘ he sounds amazing. So there you have it, write Koufax off at your peril. I’m off to give their back catalogue the spin they’ve probably always deserved…