Scripted Failures

If you’ve been reading our blog you know two things: number one, we haven’t updated in a long while (sorry, things have been hectic in Scripted Failures land cause we’ve been writing new songs), and number two that we’re quite stoked on The Foxglove Hunt.  A quick recap: The Foxglove Hunt is Rob Withem of Fine China writing all the songs, playing guitar, and singing, and Ronnie Martin of Joy Electric doing all the programming and synth work.  We’ve known for awhile that the album would be out sometime this year, but now we finally have a month, an album title, an album cover (obviously since you can see it right here), and some other rad news.

The Foxglove Hunt’s debut album “Stop Heartbeat” will be out in March on Common Wall Media which released Fine China’s amazing last record ever, “The Jaws of Life”.  If you head over to the Hunt’s myspace, you can hear the finished versions of the two demos that have been up for awhile (”That’s Getting Personal” and “Business Casual”), as well as a new song called “The Life Highrise”.  If that wasn’t enough you can also buy an mp3 single of the, I assume, album track “Don’t I Know the Way” that comes to you on an old school 1.44 MB floppy disk.  How fucking cool and retro is that?  Hell, it’s so retro I’m going to have to use my older PC in the garage just to get the damn mp3, since my laptop doesn’t have a floppy drive.  And if I read the picture right it looks like they might be only making 300 of these, so you better jump on it.  I’ve already ordered mine.

As for the three songs up, I’ve only allowed myself to listen to about thirty seconds of each, which was enough time to find out that “That’s Getting Personal” and “Business Casual” were the finished album versions, and that “The Life Highrise” sounds good.  If you read Ronnie’s blog on the Joy Electric myspace, you know that he is incredibly stoked about the record.  He said that these were Rob’s best songs ever and that it was the best project he had ever produced and worked on.  If Ronnie’s that excited you know this record is going to kick ass.  Now all they need to do is post a tracklist and a link to preorder and we’ll be set!

This would have been up sooner, had Yahoo mail’s spam filter not thrown the Joy Electric newsletter in the spam folder, but the new Joy Electric album is entitled “My Grandfather, the Cubist”, and is due out on May 27th on Tooth and Nail Records.  Also the Joy Electric website has been updated with a sort of cubist influenced look and a rather lengthy interview with Ronnie.  Unfortunately there’s not a new track to listen to or a tracklist up yet, but hopefully both those will happen soon.  We’ll report it here as soon as it happens.  Get excited!

And I finally make my appearance on the blog.  Jim is happy.

So this has been around for awhile, both the band and the video, but I doubt that anyone outside of the Joy Electric, Fine China, and Starflyer 59 etc fanbase knows about it.  The Foxglove Hunt is Rob Withem, of the late great Fine China, writing the songs with Ronnie Martin, of the still going strong, Joy Electric doing all the programming and production.

So what do you get when add Fine China’s 80s pop with Joy Electric’s, for lack of better word, synth pop goodness? Pristine 80s synth pop, of course!  I could go into a long history of both of those bands, but this is all about The Foxglove Hunt.  It was early in ‘07 when news of The Foxglove Hunt surfaced.  Joy Electric and Fine China fans rejoiced.  I went ga-ga at the prospect.  But two songwriting luminaries teaming up doesn’t mean shit if the songs aren’t there.  Luckily they seem to be there.

“That’s Getting Personal” was the first song to show up on their myspace, and it was a killer.  I’ve listened to it way too many times and still haven’t worn it out.  Then “Business Casual” appeared which was good, but not necessarily as good as “That’s Getting Personal”.  Time passed, and then The Foxglove Hunt played one of their first shows, if not their first show, at Autobahn 7, which is Ronnie Martin’s synth pop festival.  Videos surfaced online.  Most of the songs didn’t make me do cartwheels on first listen, which is okay cause Fine China’s last album “The Jaws of Life” took a long time to hit me, and they’re only live versions after all.  Regardless, it was rad to watch Ronnie behind the drumset.  Then, in clicking through all the videos, I found this song (the video of which is below), which no one knows the title of.  I shot through the roof, as I usually do when i hear a song of this caliber.  So let’s get to the song.

What we have here is classic Rob Withem songwriting with classic Ronnie Martin synth work.  This is pure 80s gold, and I will swear, on whatever you consider holy, that this song would have torn up the airwaves in the 80s.  The song starts off with Ronnie’s arpeggiated synth and a beautiful Rhodes-esque lead line, that comes in for a few seconds, before exploding into full on synth pop glory with a lead line that will not leave your head, even with the aid of a shotgun, and an ultra classy synth pad playing out the chords.  Rob Withem’s fey vocals are in full effect, and his vocal line is spot on like his vocal lines always are.  The lead line is tops, the chorus is huge, the song is the perfect length, and the lyrics seem to be that wonderful special kind of melancholy that Jason Martin, of Starflyer 59, Ronnie Martin, and Rob Withem execute so well.  “Don’t go breaking my heart” (that’s the chorus), indeed.  Throughout the whole performance Ronnie looks like he’s having a blast on the drums, and Rob looks very 80s wrapping his hands around that little synth and totally sexing up the microphone.  The whole video and song is summed up perfectly at the end when someone in the audience yells out, best as I can tell, “That’s the bomb!”  While I’m not one to the use that phrase anymore, it’s true.  Whoever screamed that out isn’t bullshitting.  Just listen and see.

Wanna hear more?  Check out The Foxglove Hunt’s Myspace, or go here to see all the videos.  Wanna support the band?  Head to the distro section of the Velvet Blue Music website and buy their two song demo, for only $2.99, which features full quality versions of the two songs, “That’s Getting Personal” and “Business Casual”, that are streaming on their myspace.  It’s cheap and worth a purchase.  Here’s to hoping the full album comes out early next year!