The Boy Least Likely To - The Law Of The Playground

Customer reviews
Press release

TRACKLISTING: 1. Saddle Up, 2. A Balloon On A Broken String, 3. I Box Up All The Butterflies, 4. The Boy With Two Hearts, 5. Stringing Up Conkers, 6. The Boy Least Likely To Is A Machine, 7. Whiskers, 8. Every Goliath Has Its David, 9. When Life Gives Me Lemons I Make Lemonade, 10. The Nature of The Boy Least Likely To, 11. I Keep Myself To Myself, 12. The Worm Forgives The Plough, 13. A Fairytale Ending.

OVERVIEW:
When The Boy Least Likely To emerged from their Wendover hideaway back in 2004, lots of people who like music got very excited. Now this tends to happen quite a lot, but in this instance the excited people had good reason. A trail of 7" singles had dropped some hints that something special was happening out in a small village in Buckinghamshire, but the release of their debut album The Best Party Ever made it abundantly clear that Pete Hobbs (music, instruments) and Jof Owen (words, voice) were a Very Good Indie Pop Band.

Initially released on their own Too Young To Die imprint (and later re-released by Simon Fuller's 19 Records) The Best Party Ever was constructed from glistening melodies, glockenspiels, guitars, recorders and insightful lyrics informed by an awareness of mortality and a loss of innocence. It reminded people of Dexy's Midnight Runners, Belle & Sebastian and The Beach Boys. All over the world, it made people who love these kind of things very happy.
The Law Of The Playground is the second album from The Boy Least Likely To. Pete and Jof wanted it to have been released sooner, but it wasn't to be. Originally the album was scheduled to be released last Summer, but when the band had finished recording, they took the album in to their record label, only to be told that the label didn’t exist anymore, and that they had no intention of releasing the record. Stuck signed to a label that wasn’t a label anymore, the band spent the rest of the year trying to get the record back so they could release it themselves, twiddling their thumbs, writing more songs and wondering if anyone would ever get to hear them....
Filled with existential doubt and a feeling of disorientation, the new album follows their attempts to return to something lost along the way. If The Best Party Ever was the sound of a band chancing their way up the ladders, then The Law Of The Playground finds them merrily sliding back down the snakes. Musically they exemplify the same playful wide eyed indie pop as on their debut album, but lyrically the album is darker and more isolated.
The band moved their recording equipment out of the bedroom that they recorded the first album in and into a studio a few miles down the road. New instruments were brought in to compliment the banjos, recorders and glockenspiels of the first album. There is a brass section courtesy of the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, transforming the album opener ‘Saddle Up’ into a joyous Dexy’s stomp, while ‘The Boy With Two Hearts’ is like a rather more mournful version of the theme tune from The Flumps. Old instruments were recorded in different ways. The fiddle that gave the first album its country barn dance feel, sounds sweeter and more plaintive on this album.

“I guess that I’m just like everyone else,
I find it difficult to be myself so I pretend to be something I’m not”

The Law Of The Playground is an album about what happens when all of you’re dreams come true and it isn’t how you thought it would be. Themes of disillusionment and longing dominate the album. In ‘A Fairytale Ending’ and ‘The Boy With Two Hearts’ Jof tries to correlate between the person he once was and what he has become, while ‘A Balloon On A Broken String’ and ‘I Keep Myself To Myself’ are gentle pleas for understanding from a world in which he feels he no longer fits in.
Pop music isn’t very good at being angry. It can be sad and it can be lonely, and so many other things, but when it tries to be angry it often ends up being inadvertently amusing. The Law Of The Playground is an angry pop record, and The Boy Least Likely To know that the idea of them being angry is funny. No one will ever take them seriously when they’re angry, least of all themselves, but the idea of making a record about being hurt and frustrated by their powerlessness somehow appealed to them. Their weapons are laughable ('Every Goliath Has Its David') and when they’re not fighting imaginary evils ('The Boy Least Likely To Is A Machine') they feel threatened by something innocuous ('I Box Up All The Butterflies'). The album cover art even features a knitted bird staring off into the distance in a model tank constructed out of shoe boxes and tin cans.

Yet never has such a whimsically introspective record sounded so damn gleeful. The Law Of The Playground is as packed full of the same mischievous energy as its predecessor, which, as with their debut, offers a perfect foil to the downbeat lyrical concerns.
after much negotiation with their record label, everybody finally agreed that this album was simply too good to be left to gather dust on a shelf. The Boy Least Likely To were given their music back, they have resurrected their Too Young To Die imprint and are releasing the album themselves.