Fly off the wall

Here's an untapped resource for us, The Fly In The Courtyard, where the website of the titular noted free publication gets its favourite new bands to pop round with some instruments and little or no amplification - including on vocals, which can be a little trying at times, but you'll live - and then puts them on its site for all to wonder at. So obviously here's some favourites of ours in reduced audio circumstances. Who did you think we'd start with?



New song too. And you'd be surprised how well Salt, Pepper & Spinderella works acoustically, especially if you get David Roy from Dananananaykroyd to add to the guitar attack.



His day job we'll come back to in a second, as first we've got the band JoFo are supporting on a European tour next month, Sky Larkin. Eventually they get started with album high spot (of many, obviously) Matador, Katie atop an old BMW. That live music/vintage cars crossover draws nearer.



And a brand new song not on the album or as far as we know any B-sides, Fire Fighter. Rock that accordion, Doug.



So you'd wonder how the all-action live style of Dananananaykroyd would translate to a more parkour-friendly area, and you'd be right to be intrigued and not a little scared. Calum and John do their best screaming work on next single Black Wax against two acoustic guitars while Laura and Paul are reduced to tambourine and clapping duties, the multi-level approach on the fire escape a fine use of the space available given the number of participants. Uniquely for the situation, they also introduce an element of pyrotechnics.



Now, the rest aren't on the Fly's YouTube channel and the embedding facility for these videos is fucked to buggery, and you can quote us on that. Instead, linkage alone for similar videos of some of the other people we've been championing over the last couple of months, so you can deal with their fiddly player yourselves:

Rose Elinor Dougall stays well away from health and safety equipment up the self same fire escape for some sophisti-pop in the round aided by her band the Distractions (not the Factory Records pop-post-punk outfit or comedian Mitch Benn's backing duo), all nearly outshone by the bobble on the drummer's hat.

Everything Everything: perfectly good name, if one largely unGooglable without quotation marks, perfectly awkward sound. Why they're in an ice cream van... well, maybe you can come up with some bizarre and imaginative reason.

Eugene McGuinness - see, with one person it's easy enough, stick him in the garage, give him a chair and let him work his slanted singer-songwriterly magic.

The Voluntary Butler Scheme. When we saw Rob Jones he was doing everything from drums to guitar to keys to kazoo himself with the aid of judicious loop pedallage, but such witchcraft wouldn't do so he's brought in Damo Waters, whose own one man band Muddy Suzuki we posted about a week and a half ago, and Jon Palmer who also trades as Awesome Wells, who here he's carefully attempted to hide.