#the doozer

6/27/25.

I know I'd heard of The Doozer (Simon Loynes and Ben Kingsbury, both from Edinburgh, Scotland), but I must not have listened to their 2018 album "Figurines."

This reminds me of some greats - Graeme and Peter Jefferies (The Cake Kitchen), Dylan Shearer, and Alec Bathgate (Tall Dwarfs).

The Doozer, “Winning” from Figurines (2018)

Gotta thank Jay Hinman/Dynamite Hemorrhage for hipping me to the Doozer, through both regular play on his show and the spotlight write-up on Feeding Tube Records. The UK duo has several previous LPs on labels like Golden Lab and Siltbreeze, a fact that means little other than the Doozer has managed to evade the general consciousness despite the helping hand from arbiters of good taste. Figurines is on Feeding Tube, so who knows, maybe a Byron Coley hype sheet and Jay Hinman’s dogged perseverance will finally buoy them to the top, deservedly so.

The Doozer’s brand of slow acoustic strum and spare accompaniment on Figurines will sound familiar to anyone who’s heard The Madcap Laughs, something that is especially apparent on the title track. But these deceptively simple songs are barbed with loaded and calmly intoned one liners: “It’s a constant life”  is the quiet observation that starts the record and knocks it off balance; “You’ve got a mask for every type of occasion” is another gut punch, here accented with a bright, out of tune keyboard accompaniment. It’d be as jarring as water cooler drivel if it weren’t for the intermittent instrumental gold across the record, like the brief guitar duel on “Ticket Price.” The dim affirmations of “The Way You Move” are bolstered by the shortest guitar solo that’ll break your heart in two, and the droning “Exit” piles on to drive the point home, the two tracks combining to give Alastair Galbraith’s “Cemetery Raga” a run for its money. Everything about this record feels very studied, from the parsed-down lyrics to the carefully timed musical flourishes, but it’s well-worn, broken in, never once crossing into something wooden or pedantic. Afternoons have been spent just flipping Figurines over; its brevity is an asset, sure, but this one’s got a dour charm that’s as soothing as it is hard to shake. It’s high time we all got familiar with the Doozer.

1/27/22.

Great band name! The Doozer (Edinburgh, Scotland) peddle lo-fi songs that recall the work of Wren Kitz (Sophomore Lounge/Feeding Tube Records), Richard Dawson, and Rustin Man.

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END OF THE ROAD FESTIVAL PRESENTS... 

WOODS + SPECTRALS + THE DOOZER 

BUSH HALL, WEDNESDAY 16th MARCH 2011   

WOODS, one of the very best bands from Brooklyn, return to the UK on 16th March 2011 to play a super special show at Bush Hall.   

The distance between 2007's "At Rear House" and 2010's "At Echo Lake" may at  first seem only semantic, but it more properly represents a move from a kind of informal back porch jam ethos to a fully-committed vision of the infinite possibilities of group playing.  Over the past few years, Woods has established themselves as an anomaly in a world of freaks.  They were an odd proposition even in the outre company of vocalist/guitarist Jeremy Earl's Woodsist roster, perpetually out of time, committed to songsmanship in an age of noise, drone and improvisation, to extended soloing, oblique instrumentals and the usurping use of tapes and F/X in an age of dead-end singer/songwriters.  "At Echo Lake" feels like a diamond-sharp distillation of the turbulent power of their live shows.   

"Consistently awesome lo-fi pop" (Gorilla vs Bear) 

"A distinctive blend of spooky campfire folk, lo-fi rock, homemade tape collages, and other noisy interludes, all anchored by deceptively sturdy melodies" (Pitchfork)   

SPECTRALS: It's really quite hard not to fall for the alluring doo-wop of Moshi Moshi artist Spectrals; it's everything good about Phil Spector's sixties output filtered through a very British sense of melancholia.   

THE DOOZER: Hailing from Cambridge, England, The Doozer bears an almost uncanny vocal resonance to past legend Syd Barrett, as well as a knack for cobbling together occasional found-tape narration with string-strum and hypnotic percussive plonk not unlike The Shadow Ring.   

Tickets: 

£10 advance available from 

www.ticketweb.co.uk 

www.wegottickets.com/event/102055 

www.hmvtickets.com/events/2311  

Doors: 

7.30pm   

Further Information: 

Woods: www.myspace.com/woodsfamilyband 

Spectrals: www.myspace.com/spectralspectral 

The Doozer: www.myspace.com/thedoozerman 

Bush Hall: www.bushhallmusic.co.uk / 0208 222 6955 / 310 Uxbridge Road, London W12 7LJ 

Tube: Shepherds Bush 

--

END OF THE ROAD FESTIVAL PRESENTS... 

WOODS + SPECTRALS + THE DOOZER 

BUSH HALL, WEDNESDAY 16th MARCH 2011   

WOODS, one of the very best bands from Brooklyn, return to the UK on 16th March 2011 to play a super special show at Bush Hall.   

The distance between 2007's "At Rear House" and 2010's "At Echo Lake" may at  first seem only semantic, but it more properly represents a move from a kind of informal back porch jam ethos to a fully-committed vision of the infinite possibilities of group playing.  Over the past few years, Woods has established themselves as an anomaly in a world of freaks.  They were an odd proposition even in the outre company of vocalist/guitarist Jeremy Earl's Woodsist roster, perpetually out of time, committed to songsmanship in an age of noise, drone and improvisation, to extended soloing, oblique instrumentals and the usurping use of tapes and F/X in an age of dead-end singer/songwriters.  "At Echo Lake" feels like a diamond-sharp distillation of the turbulent power of their live shows.   

"Consistently awesome lo-fi pop" (Gorilla vs Bear) 

"A distinctive blend of spooky campfire folk, lo-fi rock, homemade tape collages, and other noisy interludes, all anchored by deceptively sturdy melodies" (Pitchfork)   

SPECTRALS: It's really quite hard not to fall for the alluring doo-wop of Moshi Moshi artist Spectrals; it's everything good about Phil Spector's sixties output filtered through a very British sense of melancholia.   

THE DOOZER: Hailing from Cambridge, England, The Doozer bears an almost uncanny vocal resonance to past legend Syd Barrett, as well as a knack for cobbling together occasional found-tape narration with string-strum and hypnotic percussive plonk not unlike The Shadow Ring.   

Tickets: 

£10 advance available from 

www.ticketweb.co.uk 

www.wegottickets.com/event/102055 

www.hmvtickets.com/events/2311  

Doors: 

7.30pm   

Further Information: 

Woods: www.myspace.com/woodsfamilyband 

Spectrals: www.myspace.com/spectralspectral 

The Doozer: www.myspace.com/thedoozerman 

Bush Hall: www.bushhallmusic.co.uk / 0208 222 6955 / 310 Uxbridge Road, London W12 7LJ 

Tube: Shepherds Bush