The Lykes of Yew: "Chalkeye"

I used to know this bloke, Menace. Nice lad—fourteen years old and already a legend. He wriggled out of school to work on an illegal chicken farm, swapping Food Technology lessons to decapitate hens cash-in-hand. At the back of a run-down horse stall, that was his one job: to hold the little peckers in his wicket-keeper’s glove and pull off the squawky end with pliers. Three pound an hour, half seven till six. Then he found work in a scrapyard and vanished.

Well Menace, you’re nicked. Seems you finally made good on that dare to get a passport and have changed your name to El Chalkeye, immortalized now thanks to the death blues/wyrd folk/ritual rock of part-time smugglers the Lykes of Yew. “Chalkeye” plays like a slow ode to Menace, and shows that this mysterious quartet from Folkestone know a thing or two about weird shit on the marshes. Butchering bass hooks and early Stones’ tones between slashes of wah-wah guitar, vocalist Crushin’ Love Jones describes a howling hot day on the farm, decency lost to an excess of acid. “Chalkeye tremble, Chalkeye creep / Chalkeye sing the chickens to sleep / Chalkeye marrow, Chalkeye bone / Chalkeye leave them chickens alone…” Things aren’t looking good for the egg-layers, and I can almost hear the greasy beaks screaming as Menace bares down on his cockerels. A hulking heroin throb keeps the drums in motion and guarantees you a Tarantino dismemberment, while the Texas Chainsaw chug to the piece proves a theory I’ve long since stuck by: namely, if you think it’s safe to have a picnic in the Garden of England, your biggest fear shouldn’t be wasps.

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