Rhymes With Orange

An enthusiastic duo from Bristol comprised of guitarist and singer Jon Lewis and singer and percussionist Jah-Man Aggrey, originally from Sierra Leone. This is their third album of palm wine, highlife and reggae-infused songs and it commences with a tribute to the celebrated Sierra Leonean group Afro National and their 1972 song ‘Push Am Forward’. While Two Man Ting operate as a duo, they neatly fill out their songs with the use of tape loops, which gives them more of a small band sound, both live and on this recording. They are at their best on the instrumental passages where Jon Lewis shows that he is an adept guitarist – either on electric with his soukous licks or acoustic on his own instrumental composition ‘Django’. Aggrey's vocals are mostly delivered in pidgin English, and they both sing on their dub-wise cover of The Clash's ‘Ghetto Defendant’ (on the last Two Man Ting album they covered The Clash's ‘Guns of Brixton’). Vocals are perhaps their biggest weakness with, for example, a curious throaty rasp on the track ‘Catch the Monkeys’. Despite rather unmusical and naive singing, the album is well-intentioned, musically varied, good natured and lots of fun.