By David Sue
14/ 8/2008

AS we all learned from Heath Ledger's mesmerising interpretation of The Joker in The Dark Knight movie, madness can sometimes be a very, very infectious thing.

Indeed, when placed in the right hands, ideas of the absurd, the unhinged, the freakishly anarchic, can all be very, well, exciting and enticing things - despite our best resistance.

It's a madcap philosophy which Manchester band Bobbie Peru are clearly keen to transpose to the world of Manc music.

The punk trio, who describe themselves on their MySpace page as being like, 'a warm mug of tea laced with arsenic', might just be the band to turn the good citizens of Manchester a bit crazy. Here is a band who are less mad for it - more plain and simple MAD.

"As a band, we aim to unsettle," murmurs Bobbie Peru bassist Simon 'Ding' Archer, who, at over six foot tall and sporting a punk-rock Mohican hairstyle, manages to unsettle with physical presence alone.

He continues: "The music we make is the sort of music I can imagine soundtracking someone being committed to a mental asylum. It's uncomfortable music - the soundtrack to madness!

"I love The Joker in the new Batman film - the whole idea of distorting people's perceptions of what's right and what's wrong. That's what this band are all about."

Since forming two years ago, Bobbie Peru - named after a character from a David Lynch film - have done a fine job of unhinging the otherwise sane minds of Manchester music devotees.

Rationality

Theirs is a world where reality and rationality are tiny obstacles to a far more enticing world of surrealism and the freakishly macabre.

The band's live shows find singer Bert Genovese dressed in a Guantanamo Bay-style boiler suit screaming into the faces of audience members; their artwork and imagery is influenced by the surrealist painter Salvador Dali; and the band's biggest celebrity fan is none other than The Fall's Mark E Smith, a man who definitely knows bonkers music when he hears it.

Creating an unsettling post-punk noise which brings to mind a bloody motorway pile-up between Fugazi, Sonic Youth and The Fall (but louder and more violent than all three), this is a band who wilfully walk the line between madness and off-beam genius.

You never know which one you're going to get with Bobbie Peru, but that's all part of their ghoulish charms. The we way we see it," explains Ding, "is that you're never going to hear our music on Radio 1, next to a song by The Kooks.

"We just don't make that kind of cosy, comfortable indie music which is so in fashion now.

"There's so much indie-lite music which is there to soundtrack shopping for jeans in the Arndale.

"I hate that sort of comfortable indie music, which is essentially like wallpaper.

"Bobbie Peru make music which is uncomfortable - it's there to challenge your senses and sanity. It's not pretty, delicate music. It's more the sound of a car crash."

Lyrcist

Bobbie Peru's heart of madness is their frontman, lyricist and main spokesman Bert Genovese.

A former art student who's fond of citing non-music influences like Kurt Vonnegut, James Joyce and David Lynch, he's a man determined to make the world come round to his rather askew, eccentric way of thinking.

Geography plays a big part in this - Bert was born and brought up in Atlanta, Georgia, in the States, and he moved to Manchester six years ago to pursue a music career (his first band Adom made minor ripples on the Manc music scene, CityLife readers may remember).

But since forming Bobbie Peru with like-minded misfits David Evason (on drums) and Ding (who played bass in PJ Harvey's backing band for two years), Bert began to pen more observational songs; songs which were part social realism, part questioning the functions of society as we know them.

"As an American living in England, I write things from a different cultural perspective," Bert explains.

"I'm fascinated by how English society works. There are so many bands writing this very rose-tinted view of the country, and romanticising what they see.

"I don't see the point - this is a time to portray a more brutal, truthful view of the country.

Youth violence

"From knife culture, to youth violence and all these gangs hanging around on the streets at night.

"There's a lot of things to question."

With such a brutalising outlook, it's unlikely Bobbie Peru were ever going to share a fanbase with the likes of Alphabeat. But in the two years since they've been gigging, Bobbie Peru have built up a strong and very loyal army of misfits and followers.

Their infamous live shows are textbook lessons in punkish iconoclasm where anything can fall apart at any second (a recent gig saw Bert run into the audience and launch a bottle of wine across the room); while their debut album Social Suicide (released on New York-based indie label Dig Nitty Records) should bring joy to any fans of funereal post-punk gloom who have felt short-changed by conveyor belt miserablists like Editors or Interpol.

But then again, it's probably not joy which Bobbie Peru want to elicit from audiences - more unruly madness. In the words of The Joker, let the craziness begin.

"The whole point of this band is to provoke a reaction," insists Ding. "For me, there's nothing worse than me looking out into the audience and seeing people with their arms crossed looking indifferent and apathetic.

"I want people to have an extreme reaction to us - extreme disgust or extreme love.

"We're here to polarise. And if people think we're a bit insane then we're doing our job."

Album Review from NYC based Sentamentalist Magazine September 2007

Unabashedly sounds like "A warm cup of tea with a hint of arsenic" on their MySpace page. Hands down, Manchester-bred Bobbie Peru is the best nu-gaze band in a while, fraught with fresh skank and leaden with time-bomb rhythms. Snippets of dire social commentary of "Sleepwar" is Rancid-related, but plenty of elements separate Bobbie Peru from the punk wrangling shoegaze masses. Notable is the firecracker drumming in "Broken Bones" and cheeky humor, based on Communist lexicon in "Bon Bon Rue", is barely-caring bouncy. "BF Skinner" makes damn sure listeners know Bobbie Peru can get raw and nitty-gritty without going for overwrought. Unreleased song "New Swan Souffle", solely judged by the title, is a prime example of incisive humor. However jaded it may be, one cannot deny Bobbie Peru of complete, utter steamrolling.--Karen Fu    http://www.myspace.com/sentimentalist

Bobbie Peru Album Review - Mike CK

Bobbie Peru – album

As the CD gets up to spinspeed I am intuitively expecting great things. I immediately want to see them live – the recording captures enough to let me know they are for real. St John Peel would've loved them. That's good enuff4me. Rip it – onto the player – hit the road. I will fight. Bloc Party in there somewhere – the voice, the synths, the phaser. Better than Bloc party tho. Guitar like Delta Five. Shit, they're unsigned! What are these stoopid labels doin of? Guys, you're bloody brilliant. Believe U Me. Believe. Oh, psychedelic+garage – like XTC, or an English Seeds. Whatever, I've got it, u ain't. LOL!

Can u imagine working for a record label that releases crap like girls aloud? It's especially weird when juxtaposed against Bobbie Peru and other class acts. U begin to realise that all lemons are yellow but not all yellows and lemon. Different. They both pop, they not both good. No, wrong. Not both same, different. No, that's just liberal me. Go to a bad restaurant and tip heavy – tell em they are good, keep it up. They go out og business quick. I missed it again. Oh no, GA are sexy. Kit off! So, if it's hormones that need ticklin… How dya make a hormone? Refuse to pay. Hee hee hee. Bless.

1^st prize goes to Bobbie Peru