EP in Focus by Vince Leigh

SPACEMAN AFRICA THE MUSICAL
IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE

Spaceman Africa, the comedic rock provocateur from Canberra, Australia, is a maestro of mischief in a musical world of his own invention.

Pioneering the “Rock & LOL” genre, he mixes sharp wit with earworm melodies, crafting songs that encapsulate life’s absurdities. His narratives leap from a drunken name change in Ireland to the foolhardy bravado of fire-breathing, all the while underpinned by a merry band, Spaceman Africa the Musical. This entourage has carried him through a series of 2023 singles, culminating in the 2024 album Full of Plates and Screws. Now, he returns with a piano-driven EP, as audacious as it is introspective.

The opening track, I’ve Now Got Big Jugs, thrusts us into the world of clinical trials, in which Spaceman once treaded as a young, wandering soul. The title alone brims with bravado, daring listeners to confront its eccentricity head-on.

Here, Spaceman plays the fool, but the kind who knows exactly what he’s doing. It’s a romp through the chaos of medical research, where the mishaps are as inevitable as they are bewildering.

Stripped back to a stark piano, the song becomes a theatre of the absurd, a critique cloaked in laughter. Spaceman’s zeal for the ludicrous is unmistakable, a contagious joy that turns the mundane into a bawdy bacchanal. As the piano and shuffle groove swirl, you’re invited to partake in a madcap narrative where the stakes are low, but the pleasure is palpable.

This is followed by I’ve Got Five Needles in My Butt Cheek, a title that defies decorum with a grin, revealing a saga of physiotherapeutic misadventure. The tale unfolds with a piano that seems to channel the spirits of countless barroom pianos before it—boisterous, unapologetic, and wonderfully unsophisticated.

Spaceman’s voice comes in, his delivery both candid and convivial, recounting the farcical overreach of an eager therapist. The sparse arrangement, just piano and voice, leaves no room for artifice; it’s a direct line to the humorously painful truth of dry needling gone awry.

The Threesome That Never Was closes this triad with a shift in tone. A pensive piano is joined by a narrative drenched in unfulfilled desire and the comedy of errors. The title says it all, really: an almost-there tale of erotic escapade, where every near-miss is a testament to premature celebration.

Spaceman’s delivery here is softer, tinged with the melancholy of missed opportunities, yet always ready with a wink and a nudge. The song becomes a paradox—a lamentation that’s also a joke, an anti-climax that’s somehow more satisfying for what didn’t happen.

On this EP, Spaceman Africa navigates the line between parody and pathos with the ease of a self-aware jester. It’s a study in absurdity, a laugh that knows too much but doesn’t care.

He’s the rogue minstrel of a world that’s lost its mind, and we’re all the better for it.

Keep up with Spaceman’s news, new music and gigs via his linktr.ee 🚀