So this arrived today (yesterday by now, obviously):
And so I opened it, eagerly:
check out the Hanklerfish!
and the nerdy spreadsheet!
and the hipster-y posing... and the Hubble telescope malfunction background image and disc label, courtesy of NASA!
and finally the lyrics booklet.
I do love these fold-out cardboard CD cases, they are as much a thing of beauty as LP sleeves when the details are done well. My favourite is Frank Turner's England Keep My Bones special edition with its leather-bound-y green goodness.
Anyway, I said I'd let you know what I thought of the music once I'd been able to listen, and while I've been stuck with it playing out of order due to weirdness in the download and my phone's interpretation of it and only having the chance to listen in short-ish bursts in the car, I've really enjoyed the songs. Catchy tunes, some are familiar to me from the trip up to Glasgow (I feel so sorry for the final year students at Glasgow School of Art, by the way, poor sods!) some not. Some are quite sweary in this explicit version and some are remarkably clean (Mother Pheasant Plucker. I'm looking at you.) I Fucking Love Science does what it says on the tin, for example, but in the workplace-safe version the lyrics have been rewritten, not just bleeped or muted.
So what style is it? It's punk-ish. Pop-punk without the polish, bits of reggae, space-y effects and optimistic big-hair rock thrown in, loads of nerdy pop-culture referencing and puns and Shakespeare. If you're aware of Nerdfighteria you'll already know the songs but you might not have heard them done like this! I'd love for Hank and The Perfect Strangers to tour the heck out of this, it would be a whole mess of fun, but Hank's work is so diverse that it would be a big commitment to take time away from, so I will content myself with listening to this wee gem of a collection of anthems to geekdom and saying 'Dude, no edge!' at every possible opportunity, and remembering to be awesome.
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