Chandra have delivered a intentionally-censored single that is toe-tapping in nature, not to mention a good soft rocking one, with cheeky pop jangles of punk rock holly jolly.
Give Smile (No Fox Gibbon) a listen below and let us know your thoughts in the comments!
While there are too many bands mimicking the carefree fuck you nature of Blink 182 and fellow late nineties pop punk success stories, these guys add a dollop of Jim Henson to their swear jar banter of a ballad-friendly gleam. The whites of their teeth start to glow once your ears understand that they really are screaming “no fox gibbon” instead of the curses you’re definitely used to, ones this energetic mayhem of genre usually cook up with less flavor than necessary.
“We all have moments in our day when we unashamedly beam or uncontrollably snigger at something we’ve seen, remembered or heard. If we’re in public then that joyous moment is quickly curbed as the self-conscious part of our brain realizes we’re on a bus, in the office, in a queue for a coffee or walking down a street. I am the worst for it and it’s gone on for so long that I now find the self-tempering of joy is an autonomic reaction. I wrote this song because it’s something I active want and need to improve on. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all gave a little bit less of a damn who is watching and really enjoyed those amazing moments in our day? Let’s all let go and smile like there are absolutely no f**ks given” – frontman Chandra Nair
It is a strange comparison, but if you took Pink before she relied on world tour acrobatics, with the early hum drum psychosis of Freddie Mercury‘s early Queen bravado (Biiiiicycle, Biiiiiiiiiiiiicycle), you would get a product very similar to Chandra‘s Smile (No Fox Gibbon). Okay, maybe without the peddled bike bell breakdown… but you get the idea.
These artists want you embrace your cringe-inducing behavior as much as you should celebrate it for the pure individual freedom being yourself provides. “I’m smiling like a maniac” becomes a five word poem in the context of this song, with Chandra Nair Chandra-Nailing the long forgotten art of not taking yourself so seriously. Even the ending “NOIICCE ONES GUYS” has more hints of sincerity than many of the twerk-savvy OnlyFans D-list talent that are now sponged, regurgitated, and spoon-fed to our children as, and I quote, “empowering.”
Is it a perfect song? Who can really say? Though, I admit, if you are looking for a group of humble artists on the verge of perfecting their semi-Weird Al into full on What Does The Fox Say sublimity, their grandeur of quivering genuine parody genius is not to be passed up. Worth the listen and even better on the second, third, and seventh go around. They are musical wife material.
