Take it at face value you might be forgiven for thinking the title of Smith & The Honey Badgers’ Killing Time implied they’d had nothing better to do with themselves in the decade or so that it’s taken to collate the ten tracks that appear thereon. But in reality, things couldn’t be further from the truth for the band’s members have actually been rather busy during this very period. Take singer ‘Smith’ for example. You recognise that voice don’t you? Of course you do for it belongs to Marietta Smith – long a fixture on a range of tracks on a ranger of The Allergies’ albums and long part of The Allergies live experience. Then there’s bassist Fergal McBride and member of The Rayvelles whose own long-gestating debut LP dropped this time last year after a flurry of long-delayed singles. Less killing time then, than finding enough time – a situation, happily, that they’ve finally managed to rectify.
Opener and former single Better Times is a brisk uptempo number powered by frantic drums, guitar wah and Smith’s soaring voice while its B-side,Love So Bad Pt 2, forms the LP’s third track delivering swamp-funky business with an instrumental sax topline on the first half and a Smith vocal topline on the second. Killing Time also features both sides of the band’s first single – The Honey Badger Strut from all the way back in 2014 – a snarling funk beast with a stomping breakdown and its flip, the dreamy soul of Let’s Pretend, which appears in the second half of the set list – albeit in its ‘album mix’ and arguably improved, incarnation. Of the remaining six cuts, look out in particular for super-tight low-slung chugger Good Work (which is all the more impressive for being a live recording from Jamuary 3), jangly funk bounce Don’t You Doubt It Baby and smouldering torch song closer In My Way. Be warned that the LP pressing run is limited to 250 copies (split between the US and UK) and bandcamp has already sold out of its quota though if you buy digital from there you can cop bonus track Going Under from the band’s first ever recording session and favourite of their sadly departed percussionist to whom the LP is dedicated.
(Out 23 April Funk Night Records)