Bonded not only by blood but a taste for finding humour in the macabre, Patrick and Tom Malone are brothers whose sibling intuition extends to a penchant for songs as melodic as they are bizarre. Cut-throat guitars, dirty basslines and contorted synthesisers are their tools as the brothers pen hook-filled numbers with strange, poetic lyrics, often influenced by the stark realism in the wordplay of Patrick’s heroes Leonard Cohen and Charles Bukowski. This bold, thought-provoking prose is set to a musical backdrop of exhilarating wall-of-sound pop and primitive punk energy, unleashed by Patrick on guitar/vocals and Tom on bass/vocals respectively, with the aid of Steve Wraight (vocals/percussion) and Dan Robershaw (guitar).
The Reading band have performed their adventurous, singularly intense live shows on the same bill as Fat White Family, The Zombies and The Correspondents, and garnered resounding praise for their blistering debut single, ‘Hanging Tree’, taken from their first long-player, Through Snow and Small Talk, to be released on the band’s own DIY Freak Power label in the autumn of 2017. It’s an album fizzing with ideas and energy, capturing Adam & Elvis in all their irreverent, witty and experimental glory, the sound of a group that have come of age and are proving as hard to pigeonhole as they are to ignore.
Adam & Elvis: She Bites Mosquitoes
Artfully displaying Adam & Elvis’ musical intuition, adroit syncopation and effortless manipulation of the Western scale – all set to a mesmerising surf-rock-meets-synth-pop pulse – ‘She Bites Mosquitoes’ deals with the hierarchical nature of young love and, so explains vocalist Patrick, “the desire to infiltrate tribes where you are ‘Untermensch’ (inferior people)”. This is something of a paradox given the superior sonics of Adam & Elvis’ new release, but then here is a band who make it their tune-filled business to defy accepted convention.
Adam & Elvis: She Bites Mosquitoes Lyrics:
Ghosts,
Walking through the walls of hotels
They smirk
A toothless farmer’s grin
How can these monsters be hurt?
You curse
But then you start to see
Young lovers be warned
The partners you now scorn
Were themselves once torn
Apart like wet paper
She bites mosquitoes
But so do you
Sir
You yourself have wrecked some minds
In parks
Summer in Krakow
My pride is etched onto my bed post
That’s maths
For blokey blokey blokes
There’s plenty of rest for the wicked
It’s the timid who toss and turn
Will I always be so neurotic?
Or will I one day learn
True love has a brain and clammy hands
Knows its place and knows its class
You say you want a man who treats you right
That’s subjective
Take some time
Blades
Flying through the circus air
The bearded ladies stair
A hierarchy here still exists
And like love
The food chain will persist
There’s plenty of rest for the wicked
It’s the timid who toss and turn
Girl you’re so academic
But you got no street smarts
True love has a brain and clammy hands
Knows its place and knows its class
You say you want a man who treats you right
That’s subjective
Take some time
True love has a brain and clammy hands
Knows its place and knows its class
You say you want a man who treats you right
That’s subjective
Take some time
