If you think about it, there’s nothing more punk – more punk as fuck, in fact – than an album full of instrumentals.
Need to set things in context? Do it yourself, listener. Want to apply some true meaning? Be our guest. Do it. For yourself. Or don’t, we don’t give a damn.
Admittedly, you can’t apply this to the work of Jean Michelle-Jarre, but for Los Bitchos the label fits just fine. Their story is also pleasingly left field; the name is an intentional bastardisation of the Spanish phrase Los Bichos, which means ‘the bugs’.
Based in London now, the all-female quartet originally hail from Australia, Sweden and Uruguay respectively, while drummer Nic Crawshaw is British, and Let The Festivities begin was produced by none other than Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos.
It consists of eleven largely word free, guitar driven instrumentals, most of which are around the three-minute mark and pile up genres irreverently like the best cosmopolitan jukebox you ever heard.
It all began when the then Kid Wave drummer Serra Petale stumbled across a dusty compilation entitled The Roots Of Chicha; Psychedelic Cumbias From Peru – Cumbia being a form of Colombian folk music which enjoyed a rise to popularity at the time.
Inspired, through it she came to the realisation that as, ‘Lyricism never came to me’, trad-rock dynamics were for the birds – and the notion of the guitar as the star was cemented in her mind.
If you’ve currently got this far and are thinking that it all sounds very nice guys but I didn’t really sign up for South American music appreciation 101, don’t stop just yet.
It’s all very well having an idea but punk, as we know, is about attitude, and the quartet clearly have it in abundance. It’s evident not just in song titles like FFS, Tripping At A Party and Good To Go!, but also in the stylistic mishmash and pure joy they bring to everything, a fiesta for the ears which is compounded by the lack of words rather than inhibited by it.
Don’t get used to anything though, you won’t be hearing it for long. Opener The Link Is About To Die has a vibrant surf twang without ever resorting to gimmickry, whilst I Enjoy It layers up the psychedelia, afrobeat and sixties’ hip shake into a cocktail of abandonment to match the four-some’s can-groove attitude.
Bored? Pista (Fresh Start) straddles East and West (Petale grew up in Turkey, where musical notions between the two cycle constantly) before indulging in a grungy seventies’ swagger to background whoops. Where to now? Well, next destination is the Caribbean, as Tropico lilts in a rum-soaked jamboree, whilst FFS is a heads down stomper which should be great fun live.
At least some of the dynamic comes from Kapranos’ encyclopedic knowledge of Cumbian music (and a studio full of trickery and vintage equipment only a true sound obsessive would care to assemble).
Combined with the band’s adventurousness, this was a match made in heaven. Closer Lindsay Goes To Mykonos unexpectedly switches to a frantic tempo and kinetic sound midway through courtesy of a vintage moog pedal, whilst random bells salvaged from the musical equivalent of a dressing up box wriggle under the senses on Good To Go!.
In fact, Let The Festivities Begin! is all about satisfying yourself, the parts of you that respond to sound like your ancestors did when banging bits of bone together.
If you want to be led by the nose listen elsewhere though, because the punks have taken over your asylum and all you’ve got is a map you draw yourself, the destination the best party in yours or any other town.
