A Great Day For The Race

Flap! (yes, the exclamation mark is part of the band name) hail from Melbourne and were discovered by Marcus Britton from Scottish Balkan brass band Orkestra del Sol when the Scots toured Oz last year. He invited them to play Edinburgh’s Arts Festival where they enjoyed a residency at the Spiegel Terrace. Which almost certainly guarantees that Flap! are an entertaining live band. But the music on A Great Day For The Race, their second album of original material, rarely impresses. The band follow in the wake of Aussie retro-bluesman CW Stoneking, yet where Stoneking has a Tom Waits-style persona and delivers memorable, droll songs, Flap! have a more generic grab bag of influences – a bit of Gypsy jazz, some Balkan brass on a chorus, an attempt at calypso. Both the male and female vocalists possess thin voices. Flap!’s album perhaps best serves as a souvenir for those who enjoyed the gig.