"What Happened to the Caterpillars" by Concrete Fun House
Review
If you have been fortunate enough to attend a Concrete Fun House gig, starting with their debut back in October 2023, you might have thought that one song in particular was a bit familiar: and it wasn't a cover as such.
You might have remembered hearing "What Happened to the Caterpillars" on ‘Hot Music Live Presents Volume Three' as performed by Year Without A Summer or even as a track on that band's 2016 eponymous EP.
The connection is Joe Wilson of both bands (and a great many more) who brought it with him, though Concrete Fun House have taken it to their bosom & made it their own. As a much noisier and in your face type outfit, this was inevitable, though they have treated it with due respect and in truth it is rather different to much of the rest of their set.
Released on September 27th as their latest single ahead of their debut album 'I Guess It's Time We Got Into This' on 18th October (which owes its title to this song), "What Happened to the Caterpillars" retains its original words and charm: in fact looking at the bigger picture, it's good that the legacy of Year Without A Summer is cherished & in fact given more of a live manifestation than hitherto.
That alone is a valid justification for CFH embracing the song, but it also brings them benefits as it brings diversity to their set. If we consider them as a punk band (I do) then it's worth recalling that original punk managed to offer a home both to the angry & polemic and to the defiantly quirky, even if popular history since has favoured the former over the latter.
They have several songs which address frustrations in a forthright manner so one which spotlights the global insect community (the song namechecks caterpillars, butterflies, fireflies, glowworms and above all moths: a big passion of YWAS) provides something agreeably different.
Even if the song has received the rather more adrenalized CFH treatment, it is still is pretty much the slowest & quietest in their set , though that said, it does get fairly frenetic from time to time. This brings out the true angst of being a moth with all the challenges that entails: possibly more effectively in this respect than the original recording.
Recorded with Jon Webb at the Moonbase and mastered by Mason Le Long at Studio Subwuf, everyone concerned has done a grand job reconciling the general warmth of the basic song to the rather more angular Concrete Fun House sound and it possesses a more complicated structure than first appears the case with passages of relative quiet and fuller racket (all five members provide their voices to the arrangement which adds further weight to those sections on top of the raucous playing), linked with episodes of riffing. I suppose in a song about metamorphosis, such internal variations make sense.
Looking ahead to the album release, Concrete Fun House will be holding a launch gig at Just Dropped In (FarGo) on October 18th and you'll be able to acquire hard copies while listening to them play their songs. Or probably more appropriately during the intervals.
They will be joined (as predicted in my review of their ‘wisteria' single on Saturday) by the piping hot What About Eric? and by Stoke based noise punk sextet Christian Music. You can get your tickets via this link:
