Review from 'Leeds Student' Feb 04

Being 747
Fun & Games
(Wrath)

In anyone else's hands, 'Weathergirl', which comes as an MPEG on the album, would sound.well, twee. Stupid, even. Crap, even more even. But it doesn't and it's
not. And maybe you have to have witnessed Being 747 in action to get it. You see, Being 747 'do' twee and they 'do' ridiculous in a way that is entirely manly -without being entirely male - and they edge the ridiculous that little bit nearer to the sublime. They cite singer/guitarist Dave Cooke as the man in the cockpit of this 747 but all three members of this troupe are characters in their own right. A warning to the heckler: these guys have an answer to everything. They're smart. And it shows. Coming from the Robyn Hitchcock school of songwriting,
Dave Cooke and his band of merry Scaramangas somehow add an air of menace to their songs which could otherwise sound like 3am-round-the-campfire-improvisations. You can't help but be slightly fearful of a man asking you in a
deadpan voice to "stop using me as target practise", like he's gonna repay the favour some time soon. Chances are that unless you're familiar with the Wrath
Records' oeuvre (which every self-respecting Leeds-dweller should be) you won't have heard of Being 747. So here are the basics: Being 747 are about as
fashionable as pyjamas. Which makes them as cool as pyjamas. They're about as 2004 as Babylon Zoo (NB: we're not drawing any parallels, here) and are all the
better for it. Scratch away at the surface and you have a wealth of ideas and experience: they sound variously like a band impaled on the sharp edges of the '80s, a band blinded by the sunshine of a certain era of the '90s and a band
floating in time and space. Above all, you have a band that can stop you in your tracks with their base sensitivity ("I wanna feel the warmth of another human
being around me / Forever."). In almost the same breath, they'll have you reaching for the PVA to repair your sides. There's something about that word 'local'. It puts
people off. Everyone's local to somewhere and these guys (along with a whole slew of other bands from 'round these parts that are being criminally ignored)
are only as local as you want them to be.
(7.75)
Hayley Avron