Just on the off chance that there is some soul out there who is disturbed by sleepless nights wondering what would happen if in a studio fantasy band type line up you could gather up say Shakespeare’s Sister, Lene Lovich and the Strawberry Switchblade with a dash of Petunia Liebling MacPumpkin. Would that person by chance be the Cheek of Her.
Musical merriment with a heart of playful gold undercut by a subtle and sinister macabre, there’s a perversely attractive tug towards the wired and wonderfully warping world of Helen Dooley – for it is she who the Cheek of Her, aside the fact that ‘Another Guy I Buried in the Woods’ features gravel being dug over – the first I guess on record since a certain Mr Bowie’s ‘Mr Gravedigger’ – this gem radiates with a sweet viciousness that lilts you along with its twinkling symphonic grace and full on passion, cutely taken by its fairy-tale sepia tweaks and shy eyed cuteness until of course you realise at the parting the true gory detailing – a kind of pop Baby Jane – and with that deceptively clever and acutely crafted, there’s an album ‘Adult Angst Anonymous’ which I’m suspecting we need to hear before we get much older.
