The Leg – An Eagle to Saturn

Rambunctious Edinburgh trio The Leg count Julian Cope among their fans, and indeed An Eagle to Saturn sounds in many ways like a throwback to the more eccentric, singular edges of 80s UK indie. Half Man Half Biscuit and The Fall are evoked by the frantic, rambunctious clatter of Twitching Stick, with its gleefully pointless refrain, “I don’t know what a twitching stick is” (neither will you by the song’s close).

Slower numbers like Bake Yourself Silly allow more space for Pete Harvey’s cello, which works most effectively when it forms one element among the endearingly artless, percussive melee; played more delicately, on tracks like Sad as Dead Monkeys, it feels at odds with the energetic silliness that prevails elsewhere. Yet that willingness to embrace incongruity is one of Saturn’s great strengths; it generates a sense of compelling weirdness that sounds, despite the familiarity of the influences here, remarkably fresh.