Wednesday, October 08, 2008  I Can't Stand the Sound of Flesh
Hitting Bone.   I count the odds as highly unlikely that Grand
Pocket Orchestra is a band which formed through a notice in a
supermarket or a guitar shop or a parish hall. It's obvious that
the thing which connects this 'riot pop' quartet is not a slim
field of common influences ("everything from the Foos to the
Chilis!") nor an impulse to combat boredom in the suburban
evenings. Instead, I can imagine the four young hooligans of the
group having being beamed down from outer space like Rowan
Atkinson in the opening credits of Mr. Bean. There's the multi-
tasking lady with neon pink candy floss hair, the punk drummer
whose bare arms are a blur, the bratty, yelping lead singer
whose movements suggest that he's permanantly engaged in a
Nintendo Wii game within his head, and 'Flesh', the darkly
mysterious Boris Karloff guitarist. These foreign beings then
stumbled upon the music shelf of a branch of Formative Fun and,
mouths agape like the guy on the es