Dutch Uncles – in session for Marc Riley – April 6, 2023 – BBC 6 Music –
Dutch Uncles in their second session for Marc Riley at BBC 6 Music, recorded just a few hours ago and broadcast live on April 6th.
Riding on the tails of their latest release “True Entertainment” which came out in March of this year, they’ve been getting a ton of positive press and a building fan base, along with an ambitious tour that starts this month and goes into the Summer.
Here’s a snippet of a review of True Entertainment from Line Of Best Fit‘s Simon Heavisides, which sums up the general vibe coming from the press:
Other press rang the XTC/Talking Heads complex pop alarm and I guess that’s not wrong exactly but at this remove it feels as if they were pigeonholed a little too swiftly and all too neatly, possibly removing them from the attention of listeners who felt they already had their fill of that particular musical niche.
Undeterred the band quietly went about creating a rich and rewarding body of work, perhaps peaking with the ambitiously sophisticated and outright humour-filled, O Shudder, before maintaining a respectable cruising altitude with 2017’s Big Balloon. (In future decades pop archaeologists will unearth these records and wonder why they slipped beneath the radar, but of course, the pop world is cruel and arbitrary). And then, for six long years silence. But now into the drunken nightmare world of 2023 comes the boldly – or possibly ambiguously – titled True Entertainment.
But not normally music as joyously freewheeling as this. Dutch Uncles can throw in a philosophical insight while laughing at themselves and surreptitiously shoving you out on the dance floor. This is multi-faceted sophisti-pop of the highest grade, sweeping through the late ’70s, careering into the ’80s greats and salting it all with a smidgen of acid house mayhem. It’s a breathless ride.
When perpetual existential anxiety is the omnipresent order of the day, any band that can keep us dancing and thinking have to be worth their weight in anxiety meds. An album promising to be, with a sly wink, True Entertainment, turns out to be all that and way, way more.
I think it’s safe to say this is a band you should be hearing more of – and I would suggest you head over to their website and grab a copy of True Entertainment.
In the meantime, dive in.
