Quirk Out is the debut mini album by Anglo-Irish experimental rock band Stump. After building up a following with their unique sound and live performances, Stump recorded Quirk Out as their second release with producer Hugh Jones at Rockfield Studios in July 1986, following the release of the Mud on a Colon EP earlier in the year. The band's aim for Quirk Out was to capture the band's energy as a live band on studio recordings. The record blends genres such as avant-garde, funk rock with indie rock sensibilities. The best known song from the album, "Buffalo", had already been released on the NME compilation C86, an influential cassette compilation containing newly recorded music from different bands of the British independent music scene.
The band released Quirk Out on their own label Stuff Records in September 1986. It was an unprecedented success for an indie album, reaching number 2 on the UK Independent Albums Chart and spending 26 weeks on the chart. In its 20th week it became the longest-charting album in the history of the chart. It sold approximately 50,000 copies. The album was also a great critical success. Melody Maker named it "one of the pleasures of 1986," whilst Sounds and the NME both included the album in their lists of the 50 greatest albums of the year. Record Collector said the album remains "Stump's most satisfying listen." The band toured the album in 1987 and made several memorable appearances on Channel 4 music show The Tube in promotion. "Buffalo" was belatedly released as a single in 1988. Although Quirk Out has not been re-released, all its songs has been remastered and reissued, most recently on the compilation Does the Fish Have Chips?: Early and Late Works 1986–1989 (2015).
Background Stump formed in London in 1983 after Irish drummer Rob McKahey left Microdisney and answered an advertisement for a singer and drummer by English musicians Kev Hopper (bass) and Chris Salmon (guitarist), who had met during the summer holidays of 1982 in Whitstable as Hopper completed his studies at the Canterbury College of Art. McKahey met with Hopper and Salmon in Peckham. McKahey recalled that at the time, the duo already had s singer, Nick Hobbs, who went on to be singer in the Shrubs, "but in those days, I was a bit of a dickhead really. I was very assertive, very pushy and I got rid of Nick because I thought that was a gaping hole in the whole thing. And Kev and Chris were very middle-class, very quiet… but then they were coming up with this music, it was so interesting, such a challenge. We tried to get a singer for ages until eventually I persuaded [Mick Lynch, his former bandmate and vocalist in Microdisney], whom I'd seen playing in Cork, and he came down. He heard the music, went 'this is great' and we were off!"
Becoming popular in indie circles for the band's unique, experimental sound, they built a following and released the four track EP Mud on a Colon in 1986 through the Ron Johnson record label. According to The Quietus, "the four tracks suggest Stump came out of the womb fully formed; the beguiling mélange of thwarted funk, traditional Irish drum rhythms (many of McKahey's time signature are concomitant with that of Irish jigs, usually performed in time) and Lynch's lyrics, which tended to play continual tricks with the English language, piling up Surrealist imagery with a humorous scorn for syntax." Their newly recorded song "Buffalo" featured on the NME influential cassette compilation C86, featuring 22 tracks from underground bands within the British indie music scene, although Stump were said to stand out from the other jangle pop bands associated with the scene due to their quirky avant-garde bent. After the success of these releases, and the band's live shows in which "the band were even more striking, with Lynch's gangly, topless, rubber-bodied figure skittering across the stage in what amounted to a physical approximation of the warped music going on beside him." The band were unsatisfied with the production of the Mud on a Colon EP, and wanted to record another release with stronger production that reflected the band's live sound. Thus, the band began work on Quirk Out in 1986.
Recording
The band recorded Quirk Out at Rockfield Studios, Monmouthshire with prolific post-punk producer Hugh Jones in July 1986.Liner notes. Lynch recalled that Jones had been asked to look at a band called the Wolfhounds that Stump were supporting, but Jones said to his manager that he wanted to produce Stump. As a result, Jones' manager took the band on and signed them a management deal. The band then "went away" and recorded demos, and Jones began "touting it around" to record companies, but other labels were not interested, so Jones decided to "throw the money in" himself. The album was recorded on Jones' budget of £10,000. Jones recalled that he "really loved [Stump]; they just didn’t sound like anything else so we financed Quirk Out and we went down to Rockfield Studios and recorded it down there. We weren’t really expecting hit singles or anything like that. You have to remember that Quirk Out was done very, very cheaply and we were using Rockfield which was sort of like my home base at that time. So at that point there were no major record companies in sight or anything like that it was something that we did independently." Nonetheless, the album's production was seen by some as unusual, as the booklet write-up for the Glastonbury Festival of 1987 said the production on the album was "expensive by independent standards."
Jones commented that "the energy Stump had on stage was amazing and we didn’t have a huge amount of time to do this thing," so essentially, with Quirk Out, he and the band were trying to do was get some of that energy onto a record. Aside from Hopper, the rest of the band were not completely comfortable with the recording process as they thought that playing in a studio was "a bit more surgical then just playing live." Jones recalled that "because so much of what they did was visual, one of the things I do remember is that, when we were doing vocals with Mick he kind of almost had to turn himself inside out to exaggerate what he was doing to the point where it seemed funny just by listening to it rather than having the additional benefit of seeing him jerking himself around." Hopper recalled that the recording sessions, and this entire era of the band, were "a happy exciting time. The influences we all brought to the band were working well at this point, even though our democratic writing and rehearsal process was tortuously slow." It had taken the band months to "fashion all the wobbly noises, tumbling drums and lyrics into songs, and unlike most bands, the band contributed equally. Hopper recalled "there was no songwriter coming in with a guitar showing everyone the chords. Instead, we relied on a fine balance of each other’s discrete musical contributions."
Music Quirk Out presented a unique sound that was highly unlike its more jangle-based C86 peers. Louder Than War characterised Quirk Out as being "full of colliding riffs and a deep, weird groove that was coalesced by Mick’s onstage charisma and natural charm." According to music journalist Martin C. Strong, Quirk Out was "zany, ludicrous and er… fishy as previous encounters, ideas and concepts were plucked from another planet where nutty professors head-danced to 'Tupperware Stripper', 'Bit Part Actor' and 'Kitchen Table'; sanity was restored for the rather well-balanced but still weird, 'Our Fathers'." After critics compared the band's music to Captain Beefheart, Hopper noted that "much was made about the Beefheart influence, but only myself and Rob were fans. Chris and Mick didn’t know his music and didn’t want to get to know it, either. One might equally claim there was a country and western thing going on (Mick’s influence) in songs like 'Everything In Its Place.'" In his review of the album, Simon Reynolds of Melody Maker said that Stump "make bodymusic. But this is not the body of chartpop, tautly hemmed within the slick vocabulary of dance and the familiar vocabulary of cool. This is a body that betrays its owner, a body in dis-grace, a slovenly body (music). 'Everything In Its Place' shows how alive Stump are to the surrealism of human corporeality.
In an interview with International Musician in March 1987, Hopper said that the band's sound is "rooted in not allowing [themselves] to get lazy:" "when we're writing songs we stretch ourselves to the limits of what we can play. It's boring otherwise, isn't it?" On the album, McKhay plays a standard Sonor 5-drum kit, with McKhay being interested in "what can be done on a normal kit" and wanting "to avoid that 'oh, I've run out of ideas, I'll get another piece of kit' syndrome," Hopper plays a fretless Wal through a HH Baby Bass, a compressor which Hopper described as making "a hell of a noise but I like it on full all the time," whilst Salmon plays his offbeat, "wobbly" lines on a standard Stratocaster through an old Selmer Treble n' Bass amplifier and Marshall cap, without any effects.
Songs
Music journalist Ron Rom said that the "manic" opening song "Tupperware Stripper" "catches the listener out with its offbeat sketch of everyday life." The song is about a man wearing yellowing Y-fronts performing his trademarked exotic dance to a group of middle aged "Tupperware ladies." Team Rock said the song contained a "mischievous smut." "Our Fathers" is less frantic than the other songs, described as having "a touch of the mellow and melodic" by The Rough Guide to Rock, although C. Strong said the song was "still weird" despite it being "rather well-balanced" and the restoration of "sanity". Team Rock said the song presented "shimmering sentimentality." Rom said the song "throws a catchy sparkle across its essentially sad anti-war theme."
After its first appearance on C86, "Buffalo" re-appeared on Quirk Out. The song features lyrics that mock the attitudes of American tourists in England. The song is well known for its refrain "how much is the fish?," which became, in the words of The Quietus, an "indie catchphrase." Scooter later used the phrase as the title of their international hit "How Much Is The Fish?". According to Pitchfork Media, the band exhibit a "bona fide musical virtuosity" on the song, "even if it's bent toward a Carl-Stalling-meets-Captain Beefheart cartoonishness that ultimately provides one of C86'''s most singular, brilliant moments." Hopper, recalling the writing some time later, said: "I came up with a bass line that was full of discords and slides. Mick had this silly idea that Americans were buffalo reincarnated, and ["Buffalo"] was a satire about Americans in London: “How do I get off the bus,” “Does the fish have chips.” I remember David Thomas from Pere Ubu disliking it." The rapid closing track, "Bit Part Actor", features "frenzied clangour."
Release and success The album was released as an LP in the UK by the band's own record label Stuff Records on 26 October 1986, although some sources mistake the album's release date as 1987. The album was also released in Australia and France as an LP by Chrysalis Records in 1986. A promotional media "DJ copy" was also distributed in Australia. In spring 1987, Stuff Records re-released the album as a cassette in the UK with the band's earlier EP Mud as a Colon as bonus tracks on the second side. When asked by an unnamed music journalist why the band re-released the album on cassette, Hopper said "a lot of people wanted a cassette because they don't have record players." The band were not fans of the production of Mud as a Colon, but by including it on the second side of the cassette release, it allowed the band to recut that EP as it was highly distorted when first released. The artwork of Quirk Out, designed by Phili Josephs with a backdrop designed by Linda Scott, features a buffalo head designed by Salmon himself.