Cardiacs
The Riverside Club, Leatherhead
Melody Maker 1986
The Cardiacs offer nothing less than a complete package. Sealed and delivered, though yet to be signed heart attack rock taken to the final conclusion. Bruised life size action dolls, they carry hideously painted faces, bloody mouths, black eyes, white flesh and dusty, reject Sally Army uniforms. Out front, the delirious ghoul with a square head struts and stares and shouts. The idea is pursued to the Nth degree. Musically, the Cardiacs are in tune with the heart beat. Start/stop. They trace an arc running through early Genesis to Devo and the Piranhas, taking in one hundred annoying bands from lurching anthems to knees-up ska pop, the underlying feature is either start/stop or startstop.
Sometimes it’s irritating, like the ticking of a loud clock. Sometimes it’s down right bloody painful, like violent hiccups. Sometimes the theatrics banish it to a state of irrelevance.
Live, the Cardiacs purvey an almost undiluted entertainment. They’ll probably make terrific videos. But before they become radio stars they’ll have to undergo major surgery.
Cardiacs Marquee London
Sputnik’s star is rising over these morons.
The Cardiacs are an egotistical talent-less bunch of jerks with nothing but gimmicks to recommend them if that. Last week I saw them at London’s Marquee club. The hot spot at the bowels of emerging trivia if the latest offering is anything to go by. The fawning music press, always susceptical to any half-wit moron that comes along, has described the group as the ultimate entertainers. If you are in a mental institution they might be. The lead singer acted as if he was retarded in a way which was quite sick.
The audience were reduced to a mindless bouncing sweaty mass by the manipulative unpleasant antics of lead singer Timmy Smith. He dribbles, not only musically, but literally, condescended and patronised inciting the audience to emulate him.
Formless and tuneless, punk played backwards, describes the music. It was an interminable hour of totally unmemorable dirge - and then they came back and did it all over again in the encore. The only piece distinguishable from the rest was a weird chant at the end, obviously the band’s anthem, which sounded like two lines from a poem repeated several times.
For those fortunate people who have not seen Cardiacs they are directly comparable to Sigue Sigue Sputnik.
Julie Parish.
Cardiacs
Marquee London
Melody Maker 1986
‘Manic pop’ offered the Marquee advert, sure, and Mexico owes a few quid. Cardiacs make The Membranes sound like Bananna-Heavy-Rama. They themselves are like some Stanley Kubrick 60s B-movie version of the post-stones pop apocalypse. They are a fairground waltz on a berserk rampage, and I can’ t dig a tune out for the life of me. There’s six of them out there, the Marquee is bursting, sweat is pouring down my leg, and I’m consoled only by the facts that firstly I’m agape and secondly Cardiacs look like they’ve been swimming. To cap it all, their presentation is more Toy Dolls and Piranhas than Einsturzende or Swans, especially when door fetishist singer Tim Smith screams "Knob" and their suits virtually peel off. By the end, flowers are distributed, bows are taken, pears of wisdom offered, "This is Jim, our guitarist, one day he’ll be dead" and nobody can resist them. If I saw a Cardiac walking down the street, I’d run and get his autograph.
It was Hell. Lead the way Beelzebub.
The Cardiacs
Dingwalls
Sounds Jan 1987
Being Allergic to media exposure does have it’s advantages, I suppose. Those ultimate pop lepers The Cardiacs have been skulking in the wings for so long that the press have all but forgotten about them. Consequently they’ve been afforded the luxury of developing a strong repertoire and a loyal following. There’s no getting away from the fact that Cardiacs’ performance revolves around pure art school theatre, but at least the six do it extremely well. An array of glasses, inane grins, pancake flat anti-hairstyles and ghoul white make up assails the eyes of the audience. And out ears are bombarded by a sound artillery which has set 1976 as it’s personal year zero, lodged the gear stick in reverse (dig?) and set off on a backwards musical paper-chase, collecting scraps of The Buzzcocks, Albertos, Deaf School, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Van Der Graaf Generator, The Bonzo’s, The Nice and Frank Zappa.
In other words, Cardiacs are unique.
Essentially punk riffs are funnelled through the ’70s filter with more that enough changes of tempo to flummox the feet of this first-time fan. But the procession of clever/cloggs intricacies are actually listenable, the set comprising a dozen bite-size, self-contained rock operas, which all manage to avoid pomposity.
Cardiacs are a totally epic band and more than a mite entertaining to boot.
I’m converted.
Andy Hurt.
The Cardiacs
The Marquee, London.
Melody Maker, February 7, 1987.
Tim Smith dribbles over his guitar and gesticulates with one or two fingers. He orders the audience not to applaud the percussionist because "Tim Quy doesn’t know what he is doing". A thoroughly obnoxious bastard, Smith fronts the Cardiacs, an outfit often billed under the legend ‘manic rock’. It’s a fitting description. Five Cardiacs sport filthy military bandsman jackets, Sarah opting for a black, off-the-shoulder number. Their deathly faces portray fixed expressions of crooked anguish, misery and idiocy. The glares and grins, jerking arms and stiff legs make 
them look like a troupe of ragged puppets, imbibed with a perverse vitality.
Their rhythms are an art-attack synchronised with the heartbeat, a perpetual throbbing which rattles the rib-cage. Each song lurches with an inherent momentum, regularly assisted by a high-pitched lead break, a saxophone flourish or a merry-go-around of keyboards. Split second adjustments of pace, fake climaxes, an unannounced tenderness or a naked savagery, there is nothing simplistic in their aberrated symphonies. The last song is a wonderful example, a rising and falling drama with a finale of sustained notes and rolling drums, the band joined on stage by a lady in a tatty fur coat and her equally glamorous escort. The present flowers, pop champagne and balloons, while cannons explode showers of confetti into the air. Bows are taken, kisses planted and backs slapped.
To some, the Cardiacs are an unpalatable and preposterous invention. Taken at face value, that¹s understandable. But, beneath the clutter of sounds and the absurd appearances, is an exaggerated exploration of human hopes and fears and a clear perception of the power of entertainment.
The Cardiacs are a thrilling, chilling spectacle, hilarious and terrifying, an experience of a totally unique quality with which acquaintance should be made at every opportunity.
PUSH
Cardiacs
The bunker club, Rotterdam
Melody Maker, Nov 14th 1987
The maniac, the idiot, the fop, the sultry and the forlorn, the one who defies description: six characters in search of a play. What do you want? A primitive ritual, a tragedy, a farce, an epic, a Punch and Judy show? It’s all here, it’s absurd.
From the old to the new, from ‘To Go Off And Things’ to ‘Tarred and Feathered’ and a couple yet to be committed to vinyl, Cardiacs are fat flies humming in your ear, a smelly tongue down your throat, an inexplicable, sticky dribble .JPG)
upon your sleeve. Sometimes a rock group, sometimes an orchestra, sometimes an inanely tinkling music box full of plastic trinkets.
The big beat, the odd percussive instruments and merry-go-round keyboards, the kerrang of guitar, the raspberry saxophone, the words either pronounced with precision or ga- ga- ga- jabbered, it’s a massive score. The finest examples are ‘Big Ship’ and the final song. Both are melodramatic and mellifluous, a rising and falling of twisted euphoria, the latter complete with the appearance of the mysterious man they call The Consultant and the tarty Miss Swift, who pop balloons and pop champagne and take the bows while the band play on and on. Vocalist Tim Smith is left to rip apart a bunch of flowers and is then whisked away, wrapped in Miss Swift’s fur coat, before POP! And a confetti cannon showers a storm of colour into the audience.
All Spectacular and all peculiar, everything about Cardiacs is designed to incite a reaction. Although some of the Dutch are simply bemused, others decide whether the band are wind up machines, laughing stocks, whipping boys or scary monsters and act accordingly. And me? I stand at the back and wait impatiently. I want to hit them. I want to hurt them. Badly. And then I want to cradle their funny, stupid, ugly, painted faces in my arms and cry with them. It’s absurd.
PUSH
The Cardiacs
Marquee Soho London.
Sounds Jan 1988
In the distance, fairy bells are ringing, and the Marquee stage is adorned with luminous banners and flowers. No, it’s not 1967, it’s the cleverly calculated wackiness of the Cardiacs. They burst onto the stage looking and sounding like the toys from Trumpton on acid, leading a merry-go-round dance with fine use of sax and keyboards. The Cardiacs’ visuals are an important part of their self-styled dementia. However, it must take a certain amount of effort to look so deranged and sound so good. They are also in the clever position of being virtually incomparable to anyone else so how come they’ve been going so long without any real recognition? Could it be that their fractious little numbers wear a bit thin after continual hearing?
‘Too many irons in the fire’, the current single, is played with relish, and it encapsulates all that is good about the Cardiacs. With children’s TV keyboards and happy but twisted lyrics ("Everything turns out nicely in the
summertime"), the exuberant singer bounces around, looking like Alexei Sayle and sounding like a strangled chicken, giving two fingered salutes to the audience and ranting on about bottoms and farts.
After a whirlwind performance, The Cardiacs’ set finishes in a grand finale of confetti, champagne and flowers not bad for the dingy confines of the Marquee and there’s not an unhappy face in the house.
Cathi Unsworth.
CARDIACS.
Town and Country Club March 1988
NME
I THOUGHT the bloke standing next to me best summed it up: he was sick all over his feet!
The Cardiacs are the worst band in the world, and I HATE them. This is a critical response of such negativity, that I’m sure The Cardiacs will revel in it.
They are the band that punk forgot to invent: a grotesque marriage between the Sex Pistols, XTC and Devo. If anyone needs persuading that reviving the tacky theatrics of the ’70s is a redundant exercise, then they should take themselves to a Cardiacs gig and be appalled.
Frontman, vocalist, and most obnoxious member of The Cardiacs, Tim Smith congratulated us for coming out of our "shitty little houses" to see him. I wish Smith had stayed in his shitty little house, because I don’t find insane people entertaining. The entire band ponces about as if they have had frontal lobotomies. Ha ha ha, mental illness! Tell that to MENCAP, you jerks.
The Cardiacs have to rely heavily on the visual element of their act as their music sucks: a repetitious and pretentious mess of a diet of watching children’s television programmes. All the best riffs from Watch With Mother have been well and truly nicked.
One can call The Cardiacs every name under the sun, and it doesn’t hurt them. They won’t go away, for, they have cult following worthy of Psychic TV. Except, Cardiacs devotees are the types who lap up Tim Smith’s verbal abuse and leer at saxophonist Sarah Smith’s cleavage.
Lambs to the slaughter of live entertainment.
Jane Solanas
NME
CARDIACS.
Town and Country Club December 1988
Melody Maker
The Cardiacs wouldn’t go down at all well in an Acid House club.
When singer Tim Smith announces, "This is a song about love", what he means is that it’s about 10 songs-a restless, stuttering amalgam of ideas, like all their songs. If anything binds them together, it’s the gut-wrenching, primal Sixties organ (not so much cosmic as spasmic): but try dancing to it. You need a clear space 50 feet either side of you to get your money’s worth. In my darker moments, I find myself thinking that if "Cabaret" was a rock opera, this would be it. It’s like they’ve all had electrodes attached to their tits, the way they judder and jerk, seldom resting on one theme long enough to for the audience to get a hold on it. People have wondered whether this is because none of the ideas are strong enough to sustain attention on their own, but the truth is that they’re just having fun.
Unlike Sparks, who they’re often compared to, The Cardiacs are not so much theatrically eccentric as completely f***ing neurotic.
When they do lay themselves open, as on last year’s near-hit single, "Is This The Life", with its vast, anthemic chorus and restrained, almost "sung" (rather than barked) vocals, the effect is staggering. It struts and lurches, winds round tails back on itself like the painted outline of a flower on a backdrop. All you can do is throw back your head and revel in the sheer size of it, just as they do.
The second encore, "Big Ship" another vast, Wagnerian affair seems a perfect end to the evening, after which it only remains for two dinner-suited scoundrels to come on with bouquets, balloons and champagne, confetti streaming down like Kennedy’s last parade, to close the proceedings. The moment is all a bit much for Tim Smith, who does Dicky Attenborough and has to be lead off, weeping. And if ever tears were genuine, these are they.
Andrew Smith
CARDIACS.
Town and Country Club December 1988
NME
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This thing is out of control. A twiddly organ introduction induces mass hysteria amongst the huge Cardiacs cult following, a bizarre range of pigtailed princesses and grebo gothniks. Their devotion continues throughout the group’s sensational strobe strafed entrance onto a fluorescently flowery stage.
The strange children’s party atmosphere mixes innocence with inner sense, a teddy’s bears’ picnic gone horribly wrong. Generally, twee provincial Englishness and slapstick theatrical lunacy cripple and crush musical creativity. So why are the Cardiacs so brilliant?
It could be their tortuously twisted tunes: Glastonbury grunge meets church hymn while military marches collapse into soothing lullabies. And that’s just the first song. The Cardiacs construct complex cathedrals of sound without ever losing the raging furnace of mania that drives them. And their image is improving. Derided as progressive pomp and diehard spirit-of-’76 by journos (who strangely still turn up at there gigs), the sonic slabs and ugly spectacle of The Cardiacs is actually closer to punk than the designer dross currently peddled by the likes of Swing Out Siouxie and her Banshees.
Gone are the vomit-caked circus uniforms, replaced by eccentric drama students whose energetic experiments excuse any self-indulgence: Berk off without the jerk off.
Tree trunk guitars and elephantine saxophones are severed by squiggling synths and Brian May solos. Every stirring anthem resembles a towering remake of that epic TV theme you cant quite remember, while ‘Is This The Life’ sounds like PiL pumping up the Nuremberg rallies.
In a pop chart clogged up with oldies from adverts and new songs aiming to be tomorrows adverts, The Cardiacs deserve to be number one every Christmas.
I can’t help it, doctor, it must be love.
Stephen Dalton
NME
CARDIACS
Camden Palace London
1992
When it comes to the media, the Cardiacs are so ignored and underrated it’s close to criminal. But that’s what happens when your not right up front with what’s happening on the cutting edge of an indie scene that changes its colours more often than Michael Jackson’s stage set. They may be a million times more imaginative, original and creative than many of the other current indie stars but that doesn’t seem to cut any ice whatsoever with those who decide what’s cool, what’s fool and what’s generally hip to listen to. could cardiacs give a monkeys? somehow I doubt it, they have a rabid following that follows them wherever they go and I’m sure they’re 
much more intent on playing their great slabs of weirdo, quirky rock than pandering to any fads. The Camden Palace is ideal for the Cardiacs. It’s a huge club that, every Tuesday, is packed with kids dancing to the likes of Nirvana, The Wonder Stuff and the Levellers. The club also features one band, sometimes peeling the paint from the walls, or in some cases, achieving nothing more than pissing off the crowd who’d rather the band just fucked off so they could carry on dancing to the top indie tunes! The Cardiacs won hands down. How could they possibly fail with a character like Tim Smith on guitar and vocals. Get this man a straight-jacket! Between classic moments like ‘Is This The Life’, ‘The Duck And Roger The Horse’ and ‘Heaven Born And Ever Bright’ he would be found either screaming into the microphone about cup cakes or hitting bass player (and brother) Jim Smith violently around the head. After all these years, tonight, The Cardiacs proved themselves to be genuinely exciting and explosive. An excellent example of how great a rock band can be if they really put their mind to it. Ignore no longer.
James Sherry