Nigel Stone appreciates the new album from Mik Artistik, Sound…
Despite being hilarious, Mik Artistik’s Ego Trip are not a novelty act. There is definitely humour on the album “Sound”, but it is touched with pathos and poignancy.
Mik’s songs often look at the minutiae of day to day life, whilst examining the bigger picture of what it means to be alive at the same time. These are honest songs, sometimes brutally so, but seldom is the listener not smiling or laughing along with them.
Musically the album is faultless. Bassist Benson J. Walker is an accomplished and seasoned musician with a funk and soul soaked CV. His fluid playing lends the album a bountiful back drop of groove, whilst guitarist Jonny Flockton’s versatile fingers drive the music forward through Country and Western, Americana, rock ‘n’ roll, soul, and anything else a song might require.
There’s even a touch of African melody on the deceptively jolly and overtly political “Hospitent”; a song in which Mik self harms with despair at the state of the world, and ends up in a tent because “the NHS couldn’t pay the rent”.
This is gallows humour with a human touch.
Musically, the slinky “Voodoo” wouldn’t sound out of place on a Tarantino soundtrack. Here Mik laments the fact that your kids are going to hate you, hate your shirts, hate your shoes, hate your musical tastes.
“They don’t like The Doors. They don’t like The Pixies” he declares.
Middle class ethical consumers, Mik’s own mother, they’ve all “got the voodoo”, and at the end of the song, Mik takes his argument to the Pearly Gates, where he has a go at St Peter, and demands “a word with that supreme being”.
This is dark and witty stuff.
It’s been a great year for the band. Their reputation as a “must see” live act is growing, thanks in some part to the fact that the first two singles from the album were championed by Gideon Coe and received considerable airplay on Radio 6Music. The annoyingly catchy but beautifully human “Plastic Fox” chugs along frantically and will be with you for days. “David Bowie Was A Funny Man” is a light hearted tribute to the slight connection between Bowie and the North of England. Bowie references litter the song like punchlines.
The new single, “Stars” is on here too. “Stars” is a Christmas song in the same way “Fairytale of New York” is a festive ditty. “I look down at the oily little puddle, and I see a rainbow” is a telling line. Mik is able to see the beauty and humour in the dark places, and expresses it in a comedic and “artistik” manner.
Mik’s delivery is sometimes conversational, occasionally rambling, and this reflects the inclusive, immersive, and improvised nature of the band’s live performances.
The simple, subtle, and stark “Odd Jobs” is a moment of quiet contemplation from a once successful man, who now gets by as a handyman to pay the bills, and whose wife gives him cash when the work doesn’t come in, and the last track on the album, “Sweet Leaf Of The North” recounts the time the band went down to play a gig in London. The titular leaf gets itself caught on the windscreen of the vehicle they’re driving and hangs on all the way to the gig and back home again, “a symbol of hope, in a world that’s cold and grey”.
Yes, Mik Artistik’s Ego Trip are funny, but the band is no joke. Bin bags replace tumbleweed on “The Zumba Sign’s Come Down”, a solemn cry for dying High Streets, while Mik gets fooled yet again by traffic on the rocking “Car That Makes A Bus Sound”. Whether he’s bracing himself to “face the music” for being late home shopping on “Six Missed Calls”, or climbing back under the quilt, to hide from the nightmare world outside on “Back To Bed”, the album “Sound” is all killer, no filler, so miss it at your peril.
Buy (via Bandcamp)