one4review | On 11, Aug 2024

Jazz Emu, the arrogant, urbane and oddly 1970’s themed musical mastermind persona of Archie Henderson is an act to keep an eye on. With a strong and ever-growing online following, he’s moving from short TikTok music videos up to TV appearances and runs in London Theatres. Coming off the success of his previous hit Fringe show You Shouldn’t Have, Knight Fever sees the ever-ambitious Jazz Emu competing for that most precious of honours – a knighthood. And this time he is joined by a full three-piece band, The Cosmique Perfection.

Jazz Emu definitely deserves his success. Both his gag and music writing are top notch but what really sets him apart, other than his unique comedy persona, is the minute attention to detail. This is particularly evident in the productions of the songs, which go beyond something you can hum along with to genuinely fantastic works of art which I’m sure those more musically minded than me would be able to analyse for how they work so well.

Unfortunately, there is a minor issue in that the lyrics of the songs – where the actual jokes are – are not always the easiest to pick out from the rest of the music and it breaks my heart to say the main reason for this is that the live band and in particular the live drums, really drown out a lot of the vocals. And that’s a shame because it’s always great to have a full live band. For some songs, the ones already released online, they are accompanied by music videos projected on the big screen with lyrics, which meant we were still able to enjoy them, but for the others, you got about one funny line in three. Fortunately the jokes outside of the songs, of which there are many, were great.

Great fun and well worth a watch.

****
Reviewed by Tom
Pleasance Courtyard-Pleasance One
21.00 (1hr)
Until 25th Aug (not 12)