Down in the Valley Records in the Twin Cities was my destination on many a bicycle ride (the now closed Richfield store). There in the tremendously hip and diverse collection of cassette tapes, I remember that I purchased both the obscurely obtuse (Camper Van Chadbourne) to the pop music oddities (Thomas Dolby’s Aliens Ate My Buick complete with white plastic case).
Wakefield’s Ryan Escolopio project Fox in the Henhouse brought back those memories while listening to their self-titled EP. The songs run along on synth waves and electronic drums like Howard Jones. Obtuse lyrics like Thomas Dolby appear all over the place, such as on “Zombie”: “Be my zombie girl, and I’ll be your boogey man/When things get scary at the sanctuary, it’s a nightmare for romance….Strike midnight at the graveyard and I’m in love” (the song also happens to have the vocoder “whoa”’s like something from Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet). There’s also some hints of the New Wave-meets-Neo-swing of Joe Jackson (“Dangerous”). Regardless, then, of influence, we’re headed back to the 80’s.
Perhaps the strongest track here is the first one, “Up (Change),” which retains some of Escolopio’s pop-punk on the guitar riffs combined with some vocal calisthenics. That pop-punk hint returns for the closing track, “Vulpes Vulpes,” a theme song of sorts: “We are the fox/We go easy into the night, alright/Living in hiding, we seek shelter from the light/Climbing out of the foxhole.” The vocal harmonies on “Fears” are reminiscent of XTC, albeit with synth overtones instead of guitars.
Fox in the Henhouse
iBOT Records
