Review Summary: A studio version of his successful performance at Sonisphere 2011, this album doesn't disappoint.
Bill Bailey is perhaps best known as a stand up comedian with musical elements to his performances, but his actual musical ventures aren't particularly well known. While he can cover songs perfectly with his own comedic charm (such as recreating Metallica's Enter Sandman on horns), it's his original material (more or less) that appears on this record.
After an instrumental opening "Lazer Gazer", we start with the track "Leg of Time", telling a very proggy tale asking who stole the aforementioned leg, with an unusual culprit. The next song, simply called "Love Song", is probably the only low point of the album, parodying the clichés of varies love songs and their at times obsessive lyrics. The next instrumental, "Apocalyptic News" is basically the same as Bailey's normal rave take on the BBC News music except with a few guitars thrown in. Nonetheless, it does nothing but improve the song.
By this point we start to reach covers, with a twist. Scarborough Fair starts with its original acoustic intro (as is in the Simon & Garfunkel version) before bursting into a Neue Deutsche Härte tribute to Rammstein, with Bailey flawlessly singing every word of the song in German. Following this is a French language take on the Gary Numan classic "Cars" (which at Sonisphere, Bailey claimed to be performed in the style of Megadeth. Whether that was his aim for the studio version is unknown but it doesn't show). These covers are brilliantly done and the foreign language take makes them thoroughly enjoyable. An eclectic German language version of "Das Hokey Kokey" (though not in the style of Kraftwerk, as is the norm at Bill Bailey shows) seems to end rather sooner than it should, unfortunately. The final full song, "Oblivion" (also known to fans as "I Bleed On Your Panini") is a very well excecuted parody of the "emo" style, singing of using food to inflict self-harm, and even sees Bailey showing off his growling ability. The outro, "Plant Pot Elegy", is a fitting piano outro after Oblivion and ends the album well.
All in all this is a very fun album to listen to, although at less than 24 minutes it does seem to fly by far to quickly.
