Merry Xmas, is a track from Stuffed Foxes’ just released new album Standardized, now why anyone wants to stick a Christmas song in the middle of their new album is beyond me, are we’re not going to be wanting to listen to said album in March or maybe June or prehaps late August? Bah bloody humbug. mind you it isn’t very Chrsitmassy, and you can kind of let the screaming no-wave lyric about wishing you a merry xmas past without really noticing it, here’s the song in question…

Stuffed Foxes are from Tours, that’s in France, they’ve just released a rather fine album called Standardized, an album that starts off with an impressively big piece of music called Biting The Dawn, a kind of post-psych and deep-shoegaze powerhouse of a song if you really must have a lazy pigeonhole. Elsewhere they’re deliciously abrasive in a positively 90s noise band kind of way, they sound like they should have been burning it up in Camden backrooms on bills with bands like Homage Freaks, Milk or Anorak Lovechild and no that Merry Xmas song doesn’t impose itself too much, pretty sure we can still blast this out in April as much as we are doing today two thirds of the way through December.

Pretend To Be a Dog (Gamelle) builds slowly while retaining the alt.noise feel while adding extra layers of slightly abrassive drama, actually Stuffed Foxes would have really stood out from the crowd back there in the busy 90s, they stand out right here right now, they’ve got bits that taste of Gang of Four or Fugazi on here, that is meant as high praise. The album has just come out via Bristol’s Stolen Body Records and French labels Reverse Tapes and Figures Libres.

Bees is three and a half minutes of buzzing around your head tension that you eventually try ansd squat away, Rough Up is restrained and beautiful, quietly moving, cloud touching, and this review is maybe making them sound a little like heard it all before here on (electronic) paper, it isn’t the case though, there’s something different here, an identity, a finger print, Stuffed Foxes stand out. All eight tracks here are strong, go have a listen, go do it yourself, go go go, have we ever let you down? Bandcamp / Linktree

Here’s a rather fine track from three years ago