More often than not, my relationship with the artists I’m drawn to follows a predictable pattern: I’ll love their early output, only to find them less and less vital as their inspiration inevitably wanes the longer they go on. Think Belle & Sebastian, Elvis Costello or Patti Smith for starters. Cardiacs defied this linear decline, but my experience with their music always tended to fluctuate wildly – swinging from pure adoration for one track to active dislike for the next. I love them, I love them not.

Confession: I know relatively little about the band – their devotees won’t find anything that surprises them here – and I heard little of their music until 1988 and the release of their first official full-length album A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window.

I’ve also only seen them once, and the show, a concert at the Falcon in Camden, somehow managed to simultaneously resemble a skronky Dadaist cabaret with shades of panto and even performance art thrown in for good measure. The intensity of the band and the euphoric reaction from their fiercely loyal fanbase that night was truly something to behold.

This was in contrast to how they were perceived by most of the British music press. I have read of a ban on featuring the band by NME, although I’m not sure if this was something of a myth, but many were deeply hostile. John Peel was also famously unmoved. Despite his massive support for independent releases, he didn’t spin a single Cardiacs track throughout the 1980s, preferring the safer, indie sensibilities of acts such as The Pooh Sticks and Siddeleys, Popinjays and Senseless Things, as Cardiacs released that debut album.

Categorising their music is difficult. Though independent, they were fond of the kind of time signatures favoured by King Crimson and Caravan; conspicuously competent musicians, they also liked to veer into more frenetic territory with the kind of unruly, punkish thrashes that would make a massive impact on the early Blur. Their influences are many and varied: from The Incredible String Band (another band I have mixed opinions about) to sea shanties, from Van Dyke Parks to Van Der Graaf Generator.

Some critics attempted to pigeonhole them as ‘pronk’ – a portmanteau of progressive rock and punk. Frontman Tim Smith, who passed away in 2020, loathed the term; he preferred to describe their complex compositions simply as ‘psychedelic pop’.

Their closest brush with the mainstream was likely the 1988 single, Is This The Life, written and produced by Smith. This might be described as straight ahead rock. It kicks off with a big stadium riff that Bruce Springsteen might envy, and includes a guitar solo that brings to mind Adrian Belew and the final magical minute of Bowie’s Boys Keep Swinging. Sadly, it’s cut halfway through on the promo below, but you can listen to the full track here.

Is This The Life limped into the British top 100 at #93. It would climb only as far as #80, before dropping out. This remained their highest ever chart position.

As you might know, or could have easily guessed, their image was also a problem for some. Defiantly unfashionable, they were theatrical, favouring clownish make-up that looked as if it had been applied without a mirror. They gurned while they played and wore grimy bandsmen uniforms, leading author (and fan) Cathi Unsworth to describe them as ‘a Salvation Army of the Damned.’

A female I knew once claimed they looked like a bunch of inbred weirdoes, an ironic comment as when Tim was interviewed in British nonsense rag, the Sunday Sport,* he claimed that he and sax player Sarah Smith, shared ‘the same mum and bed’. He further insisted: ‘We often have to tell people we’re Mr and Mrs to make it easier. That’s why we don’t get people asking why we’re holding hands all the time, or living together.’

Paradoxically, the best way to keep a secret like that isn’t usually via a national tabloid. Tim and Sarah were actually husband and wife at the time – and entirely unrelated by blood – but were happy to fuel the sensationalist narrative.

Okay, remember I mentioned actively disliking some of their songs? Here’s one of those. R.E.S. is very possibly short for Residents, the mysterious American conceptualists, and the track remains a taste I doubt I’ll ever manage to acquire. All those tempo changes grate on me, as does the merry-go-round keyboard motif, Tim’s heavily mannered vocals, the Mike Oldfieldy guitar solo, and jazzy section. The ‘that’s the way we all go’ group chorus even reminds me of Pop Goes the Weasel‘s ‘Half a pound of tuppenny rice’ line.

Of course, the track that follows it on the album, The Whole World Window, was superb.

Cardiacs, Family & Friends, as they’re being billed, will play a short tour to celebrate the music of Tim Smith in March, with dates in Portsmouth, London, Manchester and Glasgow. Details here.

For the latest Cardiacs news, click here.

*Readers outside Britain should note that the Sport specialised in crazy headlines that no-one could possibly believe like ‘World War 2 Bomber Found on Moon’, ‘Adolf Hitler Was a Woman’, and ‘Coldplay Make Exciting Album’. I only made one of those up myself.