The first thing that grabs you about Basic Surgeon is the lyrics. The album is absolutely packed with wonderful, witty, and wise words that you can’t help but listen closely to. When album opener ‘Heart, I Hope This Email Finds You Well’ begins with a verse of ‘I don’t care for cardiology/Just thinking about blood makes me dizzy/I owe my heart an apology/It’s pissed at me and it’s no wonder why’ you already know that this isn’t going to a bog standard set of songs with well-trodden verses and rhyming couplets you’ve heard two thousand times before. There are many times throughout the album that this is confirmed: ‘in practice rooms eating quiches/Trying to find musical niches’, ‘Shakespeare wrote about love when folk around him had bubonic plague/Well who am I to brave such a topic when folk around me are just full of parking rage?’, or ‘I’m making milkshakes while you’re making deals with equity weasels’ are just a few standout examples.
But for Quincey May Brown, it isn’t just about incredible one-liners and clever rhymes. Nearly every song on the album tells a detailed, powerful story – and, for me, two of the very best songs are so strong in this respect that it is hard to pick out individual lines to show why. ‘Bloody Mary’ shares a revenge fantasy as Brown dreams about doing something ‘nasty and free’ to a work environment that is bringing her down – maybe by cracking some eggs in the kitchen drawer or filling the USB ports with Fairy Liquid. ‘Bodies of Water’ recounts an experience of unwanted attention from men in a bar or club. While Brown is trying to be ‘silly with my friends’ she finds a group of guys with ‘pneumatic pecs and pointed shoes’ repetitively attempting to guess her age. While this is not the first song to broach such a topic, it is almost definitely the first one to do so with such a brilliant putdown as ‘I don’t mean to be rude fella/but not even if I was as old as Methuselah’ as the chorus.
Words so enthralling can draw attention away from the actual music at times, but it would be a shame if they were to do so here. There is something very warm and inviting about the instrumentation all the way through Basic Surgeon, with the combinations of harp, synths, piano, guitar, and brass making for a sound that matches the lyrics in terms of uniqueness. You won’t have heard another album like this this year. Brown plays the harp on songs such as ‘Hands’, creating a gentle and lulling tone that leads to an intriguing tension with the darkness in the words. This is a pattern that will repeat throughout.
I was lucky enough to attend the album launch for Basic Surgeon earlier this week, and watching Brown on stage with Joel Harries and Ben Castle only enhanced the feeling that this is a really interesting and distinctive set of songs. There’s a feeling that some of the instruments being played don’t fully belong together, but the trio blend them together in a way that makes it seem entirely natural and like things have always been that way. Both the albums and the live show are an absolute must for anyone who likes their music to be surprising, soothing, introspective, and occasionally really fucking funny. Do yourself a favour and spend half an hour with Basic Surgeon.
Words by Fran Slater
Picky Bastards 
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