Discover: Cash Cow

They're from Hereford and describe their influences as Blondie, The Kinks and Blast First's 'Nothing Short Of Total War' compilation. But they've come to remind me of summer drives up and down the M56 where I've been playing their EP over and over again. This is very much against my normal practice of filling medium to long trips with a suitably varied diet, but Cash Cow are a band worth making exceptions to your routine for.

It's often said to me by what I'd refer to (not dismissively, I should add) as the slightly sniffier end of my audience that guitar bands just don't cut it any more. My normal response is to throw in examples like The Chasms, Extradition Order and the continued brilliance of The Fall as examples to demonstrate the clear folly of such sentiments. I can now happily add Cash Cow to this list. The anti-guitar lobby has actually been in some sort of flow for the last fifty years now, and Cash Cow are the sort of band who render their positions untenable. Not to mention metaphorically shoving the aforementioned instrument up their tradesmen's entrances.

And while Cash Cow might be terribly nice people, there's a dangerous edge to their music that carried a threat of this sort of action happening. Intrusive melodies sidle up alongside the guitar buzz, both sides to bloody battle and the final outcome is a hotly contested high scoring draw with several sendings off, highly disputed refereeing decisions and much blood on the pitch.

If you read these missives regularly, you'll conclude that I'm reaching for extreme and possibly spurious metaphors because I haven't really got the words to describe what Cash Cow do and how it affects me. This is of course true, so I'll stop there and simply add that you can hear another track from Cash Cow in my August Dandelion Radio show, streaming at various times until the end of the month and if, as I expect, that's not enough, you can get more Cash Cow at their last fm site

Mark W