They Walk Among Us - Monkey in a Chicken Pen

by John Clarkson

published: 27 / 7 / 2010

They Walk Among Us - Monkey in a Chicken Pen

Label: Richard Proctor Music
Format: CD

Appealing third album from surreal-humoured Cardiff-based guitar rock group, They Walk Among Us

Review

They Walk Among Us are a guitar rock group from Cardiff. Centred around vocalist, guitarist, songwriter and producer Richard Proctor, the band, which has switched over the last couple of years from being a five-piece to a three-piece, also currently consists of Dave Beasley on bass and Rob Young on drums. The veterans of a three month tour in America and dates in the United Kingdom with the Alabama 3,they have released two previous albums, ‘Mathematics, Art in Progress’(2006) and ‘Champagne Tastes, Lemonade Pockets’(2007). The ten songs on ‘Monkey in a Chicken Pen’, their latest album, which has been released like its predecessor on Proctor’s own Richard Proctor Music, consists mainly of songs with a muscular, anthemic sound. Proctor’s lyrics tell largely of the sex wars and boy-meets-girl, boy-gets-dumped dramas. They, however, often have an underlying dark humour and offbeat surreality and these and the instrumentation, which is kept just diverse enough to stop it from ever becoming formulaic, keep the album appealing. “I win/You lose/I push/You pull,” snaps Proctor against a backdrop of stop-start, slinky-sounding rock beats on the opening song, ‘I Push You Pull’. ‘Hey Julie’ has much of the raucousness and thunder of the earlier tracks, but puts an unusual and quirky twist on the issue of stalking(“Hey Julie/please stop stalking me/If you want to know what you mean to me/I stopped to ask you the time one time/I can’t even remember giving you my telephone number”). ‘Ex Wife’ is a blues spoof (“My ex wife fucks with my mind/My ex wife killed my dog”), while ‘Pendulum’ adds a chiming pedal steel guitar to the mix, and, partially acoustic-based, is more balladic than the other offerings on the album. ‘Stones’, the final track, breaks with the three or four minute traditions of the other songs on the record, and, building over the course of six minutes from slow, rumbling beginnings, finishes in a final, thunderous rushing roar of sound. ‘Monkey in a Chicken Pen’ is a good, rather than an exceptional album, but, versatile, funny and never bland, remains throughout both constantly fulfilling and satisfying.