Sergeant Buzfuz are like nothing you have heard before, wonderfully unique and impossible to pin down generically. Part traditional British folk club, part breezy west coast retro-pop, part naïve nursery rhyme, part incisive social observation, a swirling contradiction and a juxtaposition of ideas that works beyond expectation. References to their underlying intelligence litter their career, from being named after a Dickensian character, albums themed around Papal history, witty word play with titles such as The Television will not be Revolutionised, just as the references on this album make it very much a product of their London home (though in a characteristic double bluff “S6 Girls” refers to the post code in frontman Joe Murphy’s Sheffield home town rather than a more face value Thames Estuary pun.)
It is a rare thing to find songs so meaningful landing so lightly on the listener, not for them the soap box ranting of more earnest and less aware artists, but amongst the Ray Davis imagery and the CBeebies jauntiness there are still some great observations, wonderfully valid points being made and some darker undercurrents being navigated. Why Sergeant Buzfuz haven’t played a bigger part in my listening over the last decade is a major failing on my part but thanks to this album the world has been put to rights. Okay, so now a decades back catalogue to purchase.
