Songs of Ignorance Reviews
www.gigbite.co.uk - May 2001
Its been a long time coming, but on Monday we were blessed with the birth of their first born, it weighed in at eleven songs and £14 (hmv) and was named Songs of Ignorance. Yes, this is what we have been waiting for, Murry the Humps first album, and what an album it is, Green Green Grass of Home is the opening track and tells the story of of Matt's dealer who happens to drive a three wheeler and lives in a house down by the side of the sea (Aberystwyth?) it's a witty little ditty that shows a folk side to this band. Recent single Cracking up is the second track to delight us, can imagine this song being a mosh pit song when they get bigger and get a bigger audience. Other songs to listen out for is The house that used to be a ship, Valley girl, Don't Slip Up and the excelent Five. This album is a work of art that has HIT HIT HIT written all over it and we here at gigbite will always support a band that can produce music like you get on Songs of Ignorance. Our verdic, we love it, we think you should too, cos its pure pop at its best. 8/10
- Wyn Perkins
www.audiostreet.infront.co.uk
There's more to Wales than the conventional rock of The Stereophonics, you know. Hailing from Aberystwyth, the dreadfully-monikered Murray The Hump were conceived by one Matthew Evans and are a Steve Lamacq favourite, but don't let that put you off. Rather than the indie-by-numbers favoured by Lamacq, Murray The Hump are an odd, eclectic affair drawing both from the same psychedelic garden as Gorkys, as well as delivering a similar kind of spiky pop punch as Supergrass.
'Songs Of Ignorance' is a blissfully upbeat collection of songs that manages to convey a certain, skewed kind of madness, whilst retaining a distinct pop sensibility. With more pop hooks than you can shake a stick at, as on current single 'Don't Slip Up', and a distinct hedonistic streak throughout with song titles like 'Vodka and Wine' and 'Green Green Grass', the album is a delightfully bonkers one.
Evans' Welsh twang gravitates from a gentle burr to a lingering falsetto as he expounds his disorientating and offbeat worldview. If you favour off-centre, intriguing pop music, then Murray The Hump are definitely the answer.
- (SB)
Audiostreet Customer Reviews
Date: 11 JUNE 2001, 17:50
Name: Alex Green
Score: 8
You have to be brave to start your debut album with the line 'My dealer drives a three wheeler' but Murry the Hump are just that. These strange-titled Welsh boys have produced an accomplished guitar fuelled album with touches of heart-warming beauty and strong melodies. the opener 'Green Green Grass' is a delightfully high-spirited number with some typically eccentric lyrics while 'Cracking Up' is a top guitar tune. The lighter touches come in the acoustic tracks such as 'Vodka and Wine' and the only disappointing thing about this album is that the released version of 'Don't Slip Up' is better than the album version on show here. That is a minor quibble though and I would say overall this one of many brilliant debut albums to appear this year.
www.amazon.co.uk - May 2001
They might hail from the idyllic Aberystwyth in the heart of West Wales, but Murry the Hump's Songs of Ignorance in no way evokes the whimsical, eccentric air of mysticism that hung in the air like sweet dope smoke around the debut records from Gorky's Zygotic Mynci or Super Furry Animals. No, despite a passion for the dynamic of glam rock and the occasional countrified slide guitar, this is a thoroughly modern, exceedingly British record--far more in the spirit of Pulp's "Do You Remember the First Time" than any wistful nostalgic foray into musical yesteryear. This is largely down to Murry the Hump's incredibly charismatic, exceedingly lanky lead singer Matt Evans--a songwriter with all the wry charm of his self-confessed lyrical hero, Hefner's Darren Hayman. Take the unashamedly sentimental love song "Booze and Cigarettes", which breaks hearts with beautifully simplistic allegory ("You fill my spleen with nicotine") or the slightly goofy charm of "Green Green Grass"--a song about scoring Class Bs with a helplessly grin-inducing opening couplet: "My dealer drives a three-wheeler / Lives in a house by the side of the sea". Thankfully, for all their arch-eyebrowed humour, Murry the Hump write such pretty, affecting music that it's no trial to take this glorious debut seriously. "Songs of Ignorance"? It's bliss.
- Louis Pattison
Amazon Customer Reviews:
Unimaginative, boring, dated music.
11 June, 2001
Reviewer: A music fan from Aberystwyth
Having seen this band live a fair few times, I expected an album which was as boring as their shows. I wasn't disapointed. This is the sound of a band trying hard, but not quite making sense. From opener "green green grass" all the way through the album, there seems to be a distinct lack of talent. Songs like "colouring book" are laughable; "When your colouring book is full of colour, you go down to the shop, to buy yourself another" This band wants to be like Radiohead or Travis, but even Sid Owen does it better! If you like popular welsh music like the Manics and Stereophonics, don't expect this to be the same. All in all a terrible album.
West coast Welsh beauty
31 May, 2001
Reviewer: cowshed@tinyworld.co.uk from Bridgend
I had read good reviews of this album and was keen to support a Welsh group. Thankfully the reviews were right and this is a cracking record with a range of styles that fit together providing an album that does not outstay its welcome. Hints of Gorkys and Super furries are floating around but Murry are their own band and mix top tunes with lyrics to keep you listening.
The Sunday Times, 27/05/01
THIS DAFTLY named Aberystwyth four-piece's debut is heady with the jangled-guitar magic that Thrown Like a Stone - their sparkling contribution to one of the indie label Shifty Disco's annual compilations - hinted at. That track is included here, and Songs of Ignorance is most successful when following its template of West Coast guitar-pop and relationship postmortems, both of which singer-songwriter Matthew Evans excels at. Things go awry on the cod-glam outbreaks of Don't Slip Up and Five, but you begin to forgive this after the close-harmonised highs on Colouring Book, New Deal and Booze and Cigarettes. Cavils disappear, and total absolution/acquiescence becomes inevitable, after exposure to the Taff Motown of Cracking Up, which is so ripe - it has three different choruses - and so joyous, it makes you want to tear your clothes off and run for the hills. It's that mad, and that good.
- Dan Cairns
Q Magazine, July 2001
Favourites on the Welsh live circuit finally get round to making a proper debut album.
Obeying a secret Welsh Assembly quota of one album a month, Aberystwyth's Murry The Hump follow Manic Street Preachers and Stereophonics with this latest offering. However, while their countrymen give the impression that the principality is a dour place inhabited by tortured souls, Songs of Ignorance proves that there are at least a few happy, if slightly surreal, districts. Murry The Hump could be Supergrass's country cousins, cheekily borrowing the title of Tom Jones's unofficial Welsh anthem, Green Green Grass, for a tale of a Robin Reliant-driving dope dealer, before focusing on colouring books and portable TVs rather than Cuban dictators. Occasionally they get carried away, but Songs Of Ignorance's blissfully irresponsible guitar-popshows that being in a band can be fun after all. (3 stars)
- Paul Stokes
Fed up with mind-numbingly futile r'n'b and swaggering garage efforts, indie lovers can find solace in these genteel dreamers. Half expecting a middle-class pile of folk wank this classy affair offers more than the habitual. In Murry The Hump's world everything's calm, peaceful and so goddamn perfect. From the anthemic Booze and Cigarettes to the quirky Don't Slip Up the bespectacled Matt Evans makes early 90s nostalgia seem like the next frontier.
- Anita Bhagwandas
The title is ironic, you understand. For all the gangly charm of Matthew Evans lurching toward the mic and raising his eyes to the heavens as if he can't possibly contemplate the niceities of life, debut album Songs Of Ignorance displays a wit and wisdom that most of his peers can't touch.
Better still, he croons these pearls over some frequently wonderful trad-indie tuneage. These 11 songs are scarcely radical in their ancestry, but still suggest a Valleys Pixies during Don't Slip Up and recall the paradoxical worldly innocence of The Go-Betweens on Cracking Up and Colouring Book. A brace of tracks entitled Booze & Cigarettes and Vodka & Wine, meanwhile, indicate where their true loyalties lie. A fine debut, from a band removed from pretty much everything "happening" in Britain right now and better for it. What's more, you know Murry The Hump are gonna get so much better than this. [7/10]
- Noel Gardner