We saw Jenny Spent A Penny
win Harlow Square's
battle of the bands competition a couple of weeks ago.
They were
great, and we were very impressed. We were also very pleased
that they were giving away free demo cds.
This three-piece from Loughton, Essex, are a captivating
live act. If you have the sufficient imaginative faculties,
try to imagine that Little Richard had grown up on a steady
diet of Chas and Dave and the Sweeney and subsequently formed
a beat combo with a couple of the Monkees. And then, even
more implausibly, he named this combo Jenny Spent A Penny.
So: chirpy, cheeky cockney rock with a frantic, wired edge.
"She Said" is hyper-charged, uses a guitar so drenched in
chorus it sounds like it was recorded in an Clacton ice-cream
van, and were it not for the use of the line "I think
I shat in my pants" would be pretty much flawless. "Hanging
Around" is a perfect companion piece. The guitar still
sounds like a seaside organist, the pace is still infectiously
jerky and the vocals still brilliantly over-enthused.
By the time we've moved onto the final track, "Bedwetters'
Song",
we've become keenly aware that soiling oneself is a
recurrent thematic motif in singer Jason Canagasabey's
none-more-cockney lyrics (furthermore, urination even permeates
their band name). After the storming first two tracks we're
a little less taken with this more sedate offering (we're
nearing Supergrass b-side territory here), but it's
still pretty fucking good for a band who, as far as can be
gleaned from their website, have pretty much sprung up from
out of nowhere.
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