A male voice choir but not as you imagine it

Excitement is mounting and timbers are shivering. Shops are running out of black coats and milliners are reporting brisk business.
The Spooky Men's ChoraleThe Spooky Men's Chorale
The Spooky Men's Chorale

Australia’s weird and wonderful Spooky Men’s Chorale is back for its biennial blast round Britain – and performing at the icon St Mary in the Castle on Saturday, August 3.

This is the group’s fifth UK tour, which takes in more than 30 UK venues and festivals.

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You can wave goodbye to choirs as you know them. This one is a macho juggernaut - bold, behatted, big as a behemoth and show-stoppingly good.

Sounding as sacred as a high church choir one minute; as stupid as a raft of drunks the next. And it’s massaging its awesome antipodean vocal chords right now for a fifth fine-tuned foray to the UK.

Fresh from a boot camp at a secret lakeside location and winning the Infinite Bees Gees competition at Australia’s National Folk Festival, the mighty line-up will be unveiling a shiny new show and a new album, The Spooky Man in History, which amusingly redefines the very genre they invented.

With a sound variously described as “sexy, powerful, impossibly gentle and sad butunmistakably male”, the repertoire to date has ranged from Georgian drinking songs to whisper perfect ballads and a string of improbable original hits like Don’t Stand Between a Man and his Tool and Stop Scratching It .

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Spooky veterans will still be reeling from their hilarious, elephantine retreatments of classics like Earth, Wind & Fire’s Boogie Wonderland and Abba’s Dancing Queen.

The Spooky Men’s Chorale was formed by Melbourne-based Stephen Taberner in 2001, inspired by Georgian choirs.

Tickets are £16.

Book online at www.musicglue.com/stmaryinthecastle or call 07964 544 773.

Doors open at 8pm.

St Mary in the Castle is in Pelham Crescent, Hastings.