Danes Kuko de Kobra have come up with something of an understated gem with A Girl And Her Giraffe, their second album. It’s a varied offering, though the general theatre of operations here is a sort of classic rock-tinged power pop that won’t fail to delight anyone with an ear for melody and a stomach for occasionally overdriven guitars.
‘Ocean Wide’ makes for a grungy opening to proceedings, while second track ‘Fitzroy Road (Head in the Oven)’ is an utter joy, melding the paisley underground of the mid-eighties to a melancholic chorus heavily redolent of new miserable experientialists the Gin Blossoms. It’s a nigh-on perfect mix of influences, but the sum of the parts is so, so much more – an early contender for song of the year, anyone?
Elsewhere ‘Be, Leaf ‘ is an impressive piece of epically-constructed classic rock, right down to the gritty vocals and fantastic guitars that duel their way to the end of the song in best seventies style. Quasi-title track ‘A Beautiful Girl and her Giraffe’ is a pulchritudinous piece of acoustic whimsy, given a whiff of Americana with some nicely placed instrumentation,
I was attracted to this release by a press release that promised an album ‘somewhere between Motley Crue and Husker Du’ and while that’s as far wide of the mark as it’s possible to get in seven words, it does hint at the breadth of influence and ambition at work here. Always interesting, never less than captivating, Kuko de Kobra have simply come up with a boundary-transcendent album that will delight wherever it’s heard. Highly recommended.