Kugelschreiber - Cheerleaders

Kugelschreiber – Cheerleaders

Those familiar with the wonderfully bell-like clarity of Sharron Fortnam’s voice will be chuffed to know that she has a new band, and that they’ve made an album. That band is Kugelschreiber, which means nowt more exotic than “ball-point pen”, I’m afraid, and the album is entitled Cheerleaders. Circumstances conspired to mean I missed the album launch show back in what passed for a summer, but I now get my chance to regale y’all with my nonsense in relation to the shiny thing currently spinning in ye olde CD playere.

Kugelschreiber play their brand of untraditional psychedelic fragile pop over ten tracks on this shimmering album of sweet but not too sweet delights. The opening song, Rock, Paper, Scissors, Shoe establishes the involving and relaxed vibe of the album from the off. Using her bass guitar as the lead instrument, Sharron sets the song off on a peaceful meander, happy in its own skin before fading out on a disappearing flute motif, and some strange percussion, as if to intimate that not everything is quite as it seems.

An accepting tone of slight melancholy pervades Elasticine™, the lyric is a nicely crafted piece of real poetry about loss and personal growth. Well, that’s my interpretation!

There are many highlights on this waxing, one of which arrives early in the form of Fuck Symmetry, wherein massed voices (multitracked or a choir, it’s not clear from the credits) create a caressing and swoonsome background for a lyric in thrall to an unnamed protagonist. The music is gently insistent like a cat kneading the duvet to get you to wake up and feed it, like, now! And, the video! Boy, the video (by Dylan Pecora). Here it is, a deceptively simple, but actually a quite remarkable and mesmerising thing…


(Ed – the video will play if you click the ‘Watch on YouTube‘ link in the image)

The harmonies on this album are gorgeous, and I assume it’s the same choir credited for (me x u)… throughout. Harold Lloyd isn’t really about the bespectacled silent movie star, and I’m sure you never expected it to be. No Glittering Promises takes me back to post punk girl bands like Delta 5, or the Au Pairs, or later on, Elastica, as it canters along, and there’s even a spiky guitar break! The lyric suggests a different meaning each time I hear it such is its impressionistic vibe. Sharron has a real talent as a lyric writer, a far more difficult task than you might think.

The other song with a video is (me x u) ≠ (u x me). Does that make them both “singles”, if such things exist these days? A clever exposé on the fleeting and changing nature of relationships, the song is based around another simple but effective bass riff, with all sorts of cherries on the musical cake, before an insistent keyboard break takes it home to meet yer mum. A wild guitar break pokes its head over the parapet right at the end and is faded out sharpish. We won’t have any of that nonsense here, me lad!

Medals slows things right down so we can get our breath back, and the two following tracks maintain this considered pace in order to prepare us for the final lift off. Chip Cummins’ drums on Truth Will Out Of Me are well worthy of laudation. The Sun Rose is very, very sad indeed.

The album’s closing number, almost epic-length in comparison to the rest, is the wibbly-wobbly pop-psych wonderment that is Hold On, Space Cadet!, which likens the vessel we all travel in time within, to wit our own bodies, to a vehicle for cosmic travel, which I suppose is exactly what it is. When the song ends abruptly, there is only one thing to do, and that’s press PLAY again! Marvellous!

There is a definite correlation between this album and VÄLVĒ’s Tiny Pilots, in that they display a similarity in method and execution. This is a good thing. The Cardiacs’ family gene is strong in both leading ladies.

Sharron’s Kugelschreiber have written their mark on the pop history of 2024, I just hope enough folk sit up and take notice.

TRACKLIST
01. Rock, Paper, Scissors, Shoe (3:03)
02. Elasticine™ (4:51)
03. Fuck Symmetry (4:10)
04. Harold Lloyd (3:51)
05. No Glittering Promises (3:12)
06. (me x u) ≠ (u x me) (4:08)
07. Medals (3:59)
08. Truth Will Out Of Me (3:25)
09. The Sun Rose (2:58)
10. Hold, On Space Cadet! (6:25)

Total Time – 41:02

MUSICIANS
Sharron Fortnam – Vocals, Bass, Percussion, Keyboards, Sampling
James Larcombe – Vocals, Keyboards, Sampling, Hurdy-Gurdy
Chip Cummins – Vocals, Drums, Percussion, Guitars, Keyboards, Sampling
~ With:
Chris Williams – Flute Waves (1)
Mike Vennart – Aerobatics, Slide Guitar (5)
Rob Crow, Sarah Measures, Liran Donin, Pete Grogan, Mark Holub, Emily Jones – Entangled Voices (6)
Sam Fortnam – Wamho Voiceover (10)

ADDITIONAL INFO
Record Label: Independent
Country of Origin: U.K.
Date of Release: 13th September 2024

LINKS
Kugelschreiber – Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | X | Instagram