KEG - Fun’s Over

Right from the brassy solemnity and dubby grooves of epic opener ‘Photo Day’, it’s clear that Yorkshire-via-Brighton pranksters KEG have undergone something of an upgrade for their debut full-length. Taking the cavalier bluster of their preceding EPs and swanking it up with a leftfield matrix of ballsy indie and proggish art-rock, true to its semi-ironic title, ‘Fun’s Over’ is as sharp and eccentric as it is remarkably earnest.

Rooted in a love of classic British comedy, with a handful of Radio 4-style skits here, or references to Peep Show one liners (“put it on the laterbase”), just as engaging as the band’s off-kilter songwriting is the wry lyricism of vocalist Albert Haddenham. From the raunchy infidelities of ‘Giving Up Fishing’, to the effortlessly gorgeous strains of ‘Skybather’, or, more sincerely, in the tremulous ‘Plain Words’, (“Wait for the the joke to land …nothing”), each neatly-crafted vignette is shot with a kind of bittersweet tragedy that many a great sitcom has built itself upon: the small guy thinking big while never quite able to satisfy his conceits. While KEG are a band that from the very outset have carried themselves as entertainers championing laughter and a good times aplenty, ‘Fun’s Over’ now betrays a band with a shedload of serious artistic ambition too. The fun might be over, but the party’s just getting started.