Fury III

"An affinity for Beckett provides Nutt's songs with an undercurrent of bitterness and uselessness. The music may be bouncy, but the songs are filled with allusions to betrayal and inertia. A song like "Kickstand" off the Direct Hit single sounds almost breezy if you don't pay strict attention to the lyrics, which include lines like "I was dreaming again this morning about breaking your arms." As Nutt reads some of the lyrics, he says, "It's actually a cherry-pop song." - Dallas Observer "Whe...

"An affinity for Beckett provides Nutt's songs with an undercurrent of bitterness and uselessness. The music may be bouncy, but the songs are filled with allusions to betrayal and inertia. A song like "Kickstand" off the Direct Hit single sounds almost breezy if you don't pay strict attention to the lyrics, which include lines like "I was dreaming again this morning about breaking your arms." As Nutt reads some of the lyrics, he says, "It's actually a cherry-pop song." - Dallas Observer "When you talk to Fury III singer-guitarist Stephen Nutt, you get the feeling that one day, as he's being led away in handcuffs, his neighbors will be standing in their front yards saying to reporters, "He seemed like such a nice guy." And he does. But it's only after talking with Nutt for a while that you begin to notice his quirks. Like when the Dallas Observer ran a story on his band last year and he wanted to use a photo of a coffin in lieu of one of him and his bandmates, bassist Benjamin Johnston and drummer Jeff Ryan. Or when he approached us at the CD release party for Fury III's EP Poor Me a few months ago, offering us a couple of razor blades, saying cryptically, "You might need these." Whatever. We learned a long time ago that when Nutt does things like that, he's probably joking. At least we hope he is. Besides, Fury III's music (think early Kinks, then stop thinking) is enough to make up for Nutt's skewed sense of humor. Just don't take anything he says too seriously." - Dallas Observer "Still, with lyrics like "Death waits like a cement floor / Waits for a dropping light bulb" (from the title track), sometimes it's difficult to see the humor. Separately, the songs on Poor Me sound like seven tracks of Nutt pissing in his own beer. He litters his songs with drama queens and kings, hopeless characters who can't help but take matters to dangerous extremes, screwing things up on purpose because they know they'll end up that way eventually. After listening to the gloomy lyrics of "I Took a Sick Day" ("We'll never find the time to finish our lives"), you practically expect Nutt to come barging in your house with blood on his hands and a gun in his pocket, asking if he can lay low at your place for a few days while things cool down. However, as a whole, listening to Poor Me is like watching cartoon violence, so gloriously over-the-top that you can't take a single word seriously." - Dallas Observer "Compare the repulsive yet curious feeling of supermarket tabloids to the dark humor of Lenny Bruce and Samuel Beckett, and whistle The Who while standing in the checkout line. The result: an almost perfect description of Dallas band Fury III. Like the Plymouth vehicle they're named after, Fury III cruises along, picking up a little Velvet Underground, stopping for some lo-fi '60s garage mod and finally squeezing in pop culture and literary undertones. "I first opened an anthology of Samuel Beckett because I saw myself mirroring the characters," says Steven Nutt, guitarist/ vocalist and the group's founder. He talks about stiff-legged Murphy, a character in the short story of the same name, evoking the image of a man riding down the street on a bicycle, one-legged, hopeless and lost. "It seems like all of his [Beckett's] characters are in the dark ... and have some kind of infirmity. He's a lot funnier than Lenny Bruce." - FW WEEKLY