The Mules Save Your Face by: Steve Scully Mon:03-Sep-07 Label: Organ Grinder Year: 2007 WB rating 82 out of 100

On the odd occasion, a record comes along and flies in the face of everything you think you love about music. It’s an even odder occasion when you find such a record enjoyable. Despite our pretences about music – what is good or bad about a band; what works, what doesn’t work – we are all full of contradictions. We are human, after all. Save Your Face, the new album by Oxford quintet The Mules, is one of those rare records, effectively turning this reviewer’s ideas about good music completely on their head. Earlier this year, 31 Knots released an album of similar effect: hectic, somewhat unmelodic contraptions of songs, inexplicably bowling you over. Now, it’s The Mules, belting out 15 of their punk/country numbers in little over half an hour, taking their listeners by surprise with the sheer brilliance of their controlled chaos.

‘Polly-O’ is the perfect introduction to the band - as an opening track, there are few better this year. The call-and-response chorus and the hectic, blabbering verse vocals bring an unmistakably punk vibe, picking up from the distorted power chords and powerful rhythm section. On a deeper level, The Mules exude a quirkiness that sets this song apart from your average punk track. The lyrics show it to be both a somewhat nonsensical rant, and a macabre murder ballad reminiscent of Nick Cave’s ‘Where The Wild Roses Grow’; on one hand telling a quite sinister tale – “My love/Let’s take a walk down where the reeds grows tall/I lay/I lay you down there to meet/Your lord and master” – on the other exuberant, absurd and tongue-tying – “Once I had a little dog/A baby dog a little dog/Once I had a little dog and now I am asleep.” At barely three-minutes in length, this track may only seem a snippet, but it races with rare energy.

While ‘Polly-O’ might be a terrific song, it doesn’t encompass The Mules’ signature sound. ‘Save Your Face’, the album’s second track, introduces to the fray the elements that have earnt this band the label ‘electrobilly’. This newly-invented genre, a strange little mix of country, blues and punk, brings together all the raw energy of ska, punk and their offshoots, adding honky-tonk piano and folk-inspired fiddle parts here and there.

Infectious as it is, the essential element is nerve: an impetuousness that breaks down any classical music temperance. The Mules describe themselves as ‘awkwardly funky’, and this rings true: “[Our] early recordings sound like a really angry Salvation Army Band,” claims singer and drummer Ed Seed, remembering their less-refined days. In ‘Save Your Face’, not only do the fiddle and piano add weight to an already full and idiosyncratic outfit, but the lyrics emerge as even loopier than before: “it was said the flesh of peacocks never rotted.” There’s a tinge of Madness’ ‘House of Fun’ to The Mules’ equation, as the foot-tapping is combined with head-shaking at the insane randomness of their musical ways.

Underneath this unabashed insanity and breathless energy, however, is some quite considerable musical talent. With Jenny Lau’s fiddle taking its place as one of the band’s defining elements – her solos as ad hoc and full of intensity as any finger-bleeding guitar solo – it’s perhaps quite easy to overlook the immense talent of Seed. His vocals have the attitude of an angry punk; he goes from frustrated whispers in ‘Straight A’s vs Drills’ to infuriated rambling in ‘Seasonticketholder’ with ease, and the vocal range he exhibits in the earnest, bluesy number ‘Live Feed’ is hugely impressive.

The album concludes with the vaudeville charm of ‘Ham Shank’, a song which perfectly encapsulates Save Your Face’s feel ; Seed’s indictment of the song’s subject – “your skin don’t fit your face” – is but one more moment of inspired lyricism. In all, the Mules have produced a shocking, yet accessible view into the haphazard musings of Britain’s frustrated youths. They’ve managed to appropriate musical elements so distant from the punk genre that they stand with Against Me! as some of the only truly innovative bands left on the scene. With their energy, anger, wit and intelligence all being kept in check by songwriting nous, The Mules never linger long enough to become indulgent, whilst never seeming limited enough to appear gimmicky. Save Your Face may well be one of the year’s best releases, and The Mules one of the most ingenious new bands of the year.