Pop-funk isn’t a very well-respected genre (some of Nightshift magazine’s crunchiest metaphors have been inspired by it) but it’s carried off rather well by this local trio, fronted by ex-RAF man turned medical student James Kuht. Opener ‘Hands Out of Pockets’ may have prosaic, sometimes clumsy lyrics (“Can’t you get away from me, clocks!”) but it has a sprightly, bouncing groove, some unexpectedly sweet harmonies and doesn’t get bogged down in tedious solos (appropriate, given Kuht’s theme of the tyranny of time). Kuht’s rather sardonic singing voice is solid and unshowy – if he glammed it up a notch he could pass for a young Brian Molko and all in all the track pretty much hits the spot.
B-side ‘Satellites’, with its possibly too obvious syncopations, skirts dangerously into a Chili Peppers mould and the lyric sounds like Kuht yearns to be the star of one of those “High School Nerd Gets To Take Alpha-Female To School Prom After All” comedies from the 1960s. This is a bit of a shame, as his life story so far seems rich enough to furnish some interesting material: how many airmen get to convert to sawboning? Overall, this is a promising start.