Rory Attwell, or ‘Raary Decichells’ as he went by as a member of Test Icicles, would usually change his voice entirely whenever it came to delivering vocals for tracks he had written for the band. You’ll hear his normal speaking voice and probably think what he’s trying to achieve when listening to ‘Pull the Lever’ or ‘Dancing on Pegs’ for example. Think it’s fair that any first time listener would be thrown off. It’s only properly dawned on me how strange it may sound. But funnily enough, the three songs he contributed to Test Icicles’ For Screening Purposes Only album, and a B-side that was left off, are among my favourites to listen to generally. They’ll get their posts someday. I’ve covered one already, which has been linked. And today’s is ‘Pull the Lever’ the second track from that record.

There’s not much of a long-winded, melodramatic story about how much this song means to me that I can give you. I listened to that Test Icicles album in 2010 after sort of forgetting about them for a while after the band split in 2006. ‘Pull the Lever’ came on, and when that harmonised vocal came in on the first chorus I recall it becoming a favourite almost instantly. It sounded so nice in contrast to the busier verses. Those are led by this busy, quirky punk guitar riff (played by Sam Mehran) and blaring keyboard stabs (courtesy of Dev Hynes) while Attwell exclaims about nothing much in particular, but then suddenly transition into the more melodic choruses where Attwell calmly sings the refrain. The post-chorus occurs with Attwell returning to that barking-like vocal before an instrumental breaks takes us back to the second verse to repeat the rounds again.

When I talk about Attwell ranting about ‘nothing in particular’, I don’t mean to give the idea that you shouldn’t pay any attention to the words in the song. But even the band admit that they were an afterthought, and were very much so for the majority of the album. They do sound good alongside the music though. Sometimes it’s those kinds of lyrics (where not much thought has been put into them, but not so much that it doesn’t look like they’re not trying at all) that somehow work out the best in songs. I tend to be attracted to those types, anyway. I don’t think I have anything of value to add anymore, so below’s a video of the band performing the track live for the BBC. If you like what you hear, it’s good to see the band in action.